Contemporary Celebrity Culture Research Articles

Introduction: Why study celebrity and crisis?

The series The Kominsky Method (Netflix 2018–20) stars Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin as two ageing members of today’s Hollywood milieu. Sandy Kominsky (Douglas) is an acting coach. His effort of self-preservation and perpetuation of the star's charisma clashes with corporal decay and financial collapse. Norman Newlander (Arkin) is Sandy's agent and caustic friend. He has peculiar death thoughts and constantly makes humorous reference to both men's physical, psychological and social disparities. What does Kominsky tell us about contemporary celebrity culture as regards ageing and the crisis of public appearance thereto related? The show reveals film and television industry’s leading position in setting desirable or disputable models of old age through a renovated alliance with fashion. Arkin and Douglas’s looks express the shame of old age but also glamorize it. A self-reflexive narrative testifies Hollywood’s search for innovative strategies of self-representation that includes old-age, showcasing the transformation of celebrated bodies and underlying the value of personal flexibility. Amid the decline of their image and influence, Douglas and Arkin develop a new adaptability, demonstrated variously in terms of masculine aesthetics, through clothing, living spaces, gestures and dialogue. This article investigates the implied social meaning attached to the dressed old body in the public sphere when the predicaments concern privilege and influence. The main character’s costumes draw on fashion trends such as Dandyism, hipster style and Vintage. Arkin’s, on the other hand, stick to the classic, although not in a strict formal way. Their juxtaposition reveals how fashion trends come to the aid of celebrities’ effort to overcome crisis, a means to manage as well as spectacularize confused and ambivalent attitudes to ageing.

The Kominsky Method, Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin: Fashionable impairments of an ageing Hollywood

The series The Kominsky Method (Netflix, 2018–20) stars Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin as two ageing members of today’s Hollywood milieu. Sandy Kominsky (Douglas) is an acting coach. His effort of self-preservation and perpetuation of the star’s charisma clashes with corporeal decay and financial collapse. Norman Newlander (Arkin) is Sandy’s agent and caustic friend. He has peculiar death thoughts and constantly makes humorous reference to both men’s physical, psychological and social disparities. What does Kominsky tell us about contemporary celebrity culture as regards ageing and the crisis of public appearance thereto related? The show reveals film and television industry’s leading position in setting desirable or disputable models of old age through a renovated alliance with fashion. Arkin and Douglas’s looks express the shame of old age but also glamorize it. A self-reflexive narrative testifies Hollywood’s search for innovative strategies of self-representation that includes old age, showcasing the transformation of celebrated bodies and underlying the value of personal flexibility. Amid the decline of their image and influence, Douglas and Arkin develop a new adaptability, demonstrated variously in terms of masculine aesthetics, through clothing, living spaces, gestures and dialogue. This article investigates the implied social meaning attached to the dressed old body in the public sphere when the predicaments concern privilege and influence. The main character’s costumes draw on fashion trends such as dandyism, hipster style and vintage. Arkin’s, on the other hand, stick to the classic, although not in a strict formal way. Their juxtaposition reveals how fashion trends come to the aid of celebrities’ effort to overcome crisis, a means to manage as well as spectacularize confused and ambivalent attitudes to ageing.

Coming out online: Memetic authenticity in Rebecca Black’s “Friday (Remix)”

ABSTRACT Rebecca Black was thirteen when her music video “Friday” went massively viral after it was uploaded to YouTube in 2011. Black re-entered the news cycle in 2020 after coming out as queer, and shortly thereafter releasing a remix of “Friday” for the video’s tenth anniversary. Through references to the online spaces and memetic cultures where Black was trolled and harassed, “Friday (Remix)” repackages trauma in a bright, nostalgic bundle. Through an analysis of the music video and media coverage around Black’s coming out, this article considers how “Friday (Remix)” positions Black’s rebrand as one in which, as a payoff for the resiliency she has exhibited throughout her career, the singer possesses newfound agency to express herself in an authentic way. Simultaneously, Black’s play with her virality in “Friday (Remix)” demonstrates an increasing need in contemporary celebrity culture to engage in constant self-commodification and self-“memeification” to achieve this sense of authenticity.

Rosalía's Butterflies: Self-Reflective Celebrity and the Confessional Text

Abstract: In this essay, I examine Rosalía's Motomami (2022) as a confessional text in which the artist speaks openly about her feelings and reflects on being a celebrity and her relationship with audiences. Music critics immediately noted that it departs from the formula of her previous flamenco-based albums and praised its experimentation and combination of multiple genres. The symbol of the butterfly that appears on the album cover, in the lyrics of the first track ("Saoko"), and on Rosalía's dental grills represents this transformation. But perhaps the biggest change has to do with the intimate tone of the entire album, as Rosalía confesses her struggles, fears, and desires. As Foucault shows in the History of Sexuality , confession has been a central ritual in the discursive production of truth in Western societies. Prominent celebrity studies scholars such as Sean Redmond have noted that the confessional address has become pervasive in contemporary celebrity culture, since it is almost mandatory as a promotional strategy to brand the celebrity persona and do damage control in the case of waning stars. Rosalía's confession is striking because it is played out not only in the lyrics of Motomami but also through the musical features. Most songs have a minimalist composition, with few instrumentals that are filtered and devoid of high frequencies to allow for Rosalía's vocal delivery to stand out. And it is often a bare voice that appears in contrast to aggressive drums to convey the hostile environment Rosalía has faced in the last few years.

Scandal maketh the man? The evolution of Hugh Grant and the celebrity confessional

ABSTRACT Following a range of supporting roles in the late 1980s, Hugh Grant’s breakthrough performance in Four Weddings and A Funeral (1994) established him as Britain’s ‘go-to’ romantic lead. And yet, a potentially career-ending sex scandal while on the verge of Hollywood stardom could be considered the making of the man. By analysing press coverage using analytical approaches and frameworks from celebrity studies, this article shows how several flashpoints in Grant’s personal life and subsequent ‘celebrity confessionals’ have been central to Grant’s enduring popularity and evolving star persona. As I argue, scandals across three decades, and subsequent confessionals are mirrored in Grant’s maturing onscreen persona – from commitment-phobic characters, to experimentation with satire and comedy for the American market, to his triumphant return in British biography/dramedies. This article considers Grant’s evolving and unique engagement with the media as a type of ‘reverse confessional’ – where Grant’s confessions subsequently expose the shifting nature of celebrity engagement with the media, and less desirable aspects of the (British) tabloid press. In sum, I contend the reverse narrative mode employed by Grant as an ‘image restoration strategy’ has allowed him to reclaim his own narrative and expose key truths about privacy, press coverage, and contemporary celebrity culture.

A new day for Hulk Hogan: Celebrity selves and racial diversity in contemporary professional wrestling

This paper considers contemporary World Wrestling Entertainment’s new racial politics in the light of Hulk Hogan’s 2015 erasure from the Federation after a leaked racist sex tape rant, and the African-American wrestlers The New Day’s rise to fame during the same period. This paper locates WWE’s actions as responses in line with a domestic media marketplace where the rhetoric of racial diversity is fetishised. In doing so, this paper combines literature on corporate social responsibility, race, and the performativity of the self in contemporary celebrity culture. This paper reads World Wrestling Entertainment’s actions as strategies through which the Federation’s corporate social responsibility is spectacularly performed, allowing it to grow and survive in the streaming video era.

Celebrity habitus, confessional style: Self-reflective bodily instruction in Khloé Kardashian’s Strong Looks Better Naked

The article examines Khloé Kardashian’s self-help book Strong Looks Better Naked from the perspective of representing a celebrity-based inspirational guide that extols the values of exercise and healthy living and in terms of key tenets of the autobiography. In this context, the article argues that the book represents an in-depth example of Sean Redmond’s concept of the ‘celebrity confessional’ in that it uses self-reflective disclosures to connect with readers. However, given the confessionals of bodily issues revealed in the book, the article explores how Khloé Kardashian’s narrative critically exhibits, drawing on the work of Bourdieu, a double sense of habitus. This is explored through her insider perspective that articulates the bodily norms and expectations associated with contemporary celebrity culture, and through her revealing of her own relationship with this culture, a factor significantly exacerbated through her membership of the Kardashian family and its extensively mediated celebrity brand.

‘Mingren are the respectable ones’: an analysis of everyday engagements with contemporary celebrity culture in China

ABSTRACT To investigate the values and social norms underpinning celebrity culture, it is crucial to study everyday uses of celebrity culture. Yet, studies in this area have been limited thus far, especially in non-Western contexts. This exploratory study focuses on the ways how young and middle-aged adults in everyday life in urban China discuss and value media celebrities. The results show that respondents have a rather similar way of valuing celebrity: celebrities need to have strong work ethics and showcase social responsibility; only then do they ‘earn’ their right to be considered ‘famous’. We conclude that these values are closely related to the current socio-cultural situation of China’s social transformation and echo the value system promoted by the Chinese government.

The God who gives generously: honour, praise and the agony of celebrity

AbstractThe need for honour, meaning publicly acknowledged worth, has been a feature of social life across the ages. From the ancient world of Greece and Rome, through to the honour codes of contemporary celebrity culture, the quest for honour is often framed in agonistic terms, in that honour is a limited good that demands competitive behaviour. This article examines the way early Christianity responded to ancient honour codes, with a view to its potential relevance in contemporary culture. It demonstrates the way early Christianity retained something of the language of honour in its ecclesial communities, but redefined honour in light of its conception of grace.

X-Men bromance: film, audience and promotion

ABSTRACT Richard Dyer’s influential texts Stars and Heavenly Bodies posited the notion of celebrities, in his case film stars, as symbolically significant entities in the expression of cultural values and discourse. Contemporary celebrity culture and the rise of social media have seen a decline in the type of symbolically significant film stars first examined by Dyer, yet the notion of social substantiality still holds true. With varying levels of success, contemporary celebrities constitute an influential factor in the ebb and flow of modern culture. However, to compete for attention in a cluttered and mediatised celebrity culture, group interaction has become key to going viral. Celebrity bromances in particular are now being used as a marketing technique. Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are among the celebrities attached to the X-Men film franchise. During the promotion of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the bromance between the actors featured prominently in media interviews and audience commentary alike. Although the use of the celebrity bromance was not confirmed as a promotional strategy, it provided a means to generate interest and discussion. This article will explore celebrity bromances in contemporary culture through a case study of the X-Men bromance, focusing on one promotional video and audience responses.

The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives by Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones

Reviewed by: The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives by Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones Marina Gerzić Bildhauer, Bettina, and Chris Jones, The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives (Proceedings of the British Academy, 208), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017; hardback; pp. xx, 346; 21 b/w, 16 colour illustrations; R.R.P. US$135.00, £85.00; ISBN 9780197266144. The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives offers a fascinating array of international and multidisciplinary reflections on medievalism. The introduction by Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones presents a broad history of the continuing evolution of the idea of ‘the Middle Ages’ from the fourteenth century to the present day. The collection is then divided into three themed sections, with various genres and areas, such as film, literature, politics, and Byzantinism, discussed across all the sections. One of the major strengths of this wide-ranging collection is its diversity of voices and of subject matter, with topics ranging from how Old Norse sagas are used as evidence by climate change deniers, to the way that Lady Gaga employs medieval iconography in her music videos. Part I of the collection looks at medievalism in politics and histories. Bruce Holsinger’s chapter traces the origin of the idea of the ‘medieval Warm Period’ to a naïve reading of Landnámabók, highlighting the afterlife of the idea of the ‘Warm Period’ in political discourse regarding climate change in order to argue for a more engaged relationship between natural sciences and the humanities. Eamon Byers, Stephen Kelly, and Kath Stevenson examine the connection between cultural nationalism and the figures of Cú Chulainn and Saint Patrick in their chapter, showing how these figures were used to give legitimacy to political affiliations during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Patrick Geary argues that nineteenth-century scholars such as Alexandre Herculano, Jules Michelet, and Felix Dahn served as proto-celebrities, whose writings reflect a time when medieval origin myths were used to bolster European nations. Andrew Lynch’s chapter analyses the attitudes towards and representation of the Middle Ages in a selection of children’s histories from the eighteenth and nineteenth century, arguing that these works often feature the beginning of the British nation, war, and religion as ‘the chief signifiers of the Middle Ages’ (p. 90). [End Page 194] Part II of the collection looks at practising medievalism. Celebrated German author Felicitas Hoppe reflects on her experience in adapting Hartmann von Aue’s verse romance Iwein into the young-adult novel genre, highlighting the importance of female characters Laudine and Lunette, both in von Aue’s original and in her adaptation. Museum curator James Robinson’s chapter draws on his experience of curating the Treasures of Heaven exhibition at the British Museum to outline the parallels between the medieval cult of saints and contemporary celebrity culture. Composer and musician Graham Coatman’s chapter analyses the way that medieval music is used by British composers such as Benjamin Britten, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Judith Weir, arguing for their role as examples of a broader trend of medievalism in twentieth- and twenty-first-century avant-garde music. Archivist Fani Gargova demonstrates that ‘the political dimension of medievalism […] can only be understood through an investigation of archival material’ (p. 152), examining previously unknown photographs that prove the sustained contact of three early twentieth-century Byzantine scholars. Chris Jones’s chapter provides a rich overview of medievalism in recent British and Irish poetry, highlighting the renewed turn to the medieval in contemporary verse, and offering insightful reflections of his own involvement with two projects: the translation of Seamus Heaney’s versions of Robert Henryson’s Fables into a digital app; and the creation of poetic riddles capable of being published on Twitter. The joint chapter between Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri and Lila Yawn focuses on the medieval revival festival Calendimaggio held in Assisi, and Pasolini’s left-wing medievalist Trilogy of Life, and provides insight not only into the nostalgia for, and a selective reevocation of, the medieval past, but also the importance of medievalism in Italian culture and politics. Part III of the collection centres on medievalism...

“One tweet to make so much noise”: Connected celebrity activism in the case of Marlee Matlin

Celebrity activism, online celebrity, and online activism are all growing areas of research, but have received relatively little integration. This article argues that connected celebrity activism deploys social media to forge a variety of connections, enabling activist values to pervade a celebrity persona, reinforcing perceptions of authenticity and recirculating those values to disparate audiences. In the case of Deaf American actor Marlee Matlin, media reform activism serves as a unifying feature, expressed via technologically-facilitated connections between her acting, activist, and online activities, creating a cohesive star text that is seemingly authentic in respect to both Deaf and celebrity identities without being stereotypical. Such centrality and unification via connected celebrity activism stands in contrast to more traditional celebrity activism, and draws upon the specific dynamics of digital media, online activism, and contemporary celebrity culture.

Deviant divas: Lindy Chamberlain and Schapelle Corby and the case for a new category of celebrity for criminally implicated women

In the field of celebrity studies much has been written about the superficiality of contemporary celebrity culture in which ordinary individuals are recognised as exceptional or worthy of public attention in the absence of any particular talent, contribution or achievement (Bell, 2010; Boorstin, 1972; Gamson, 1994; Langer in Edgar, 1980; Marwick and boyd, 2011; Redmond, 2013; Rojek, 2001; Turner, 2004, 2014; Turner et al., 2000). Much less has been written about the link between celebrity and criminality and the types of categories into which celebrified criminals fall (Jenks and Lorentzen, 1997; Penfold-Mounce, 2009). In the scant studies that do exist there is a thinness of attention to gender despite persuasive arguments within feminist criminological studies that crime is a gendered concept in news discourse (Jewkes, 2011; Smart, 1977). Using a qualitative content analysis of a selection of news articles on two high profile cases involving women convicted of a crime, Lindy Chamberlain (now exonerated) and Schapelle Corby, as well as recent work in the sociology of risk on desire and transgression, this research suggests that the current naming practices surrounding criminally implicated women do not adequately capture the constellation of gender-inflected media messages and the meanings with which they are imbued by sections of news workers. The implications of this research warrant a re-think of the customary labels ascribed to women convicted of a crime and the addition to existing taxonomies of a new category of celebrity, the ‘deviant diva’.

Introduction: feminism and contemporary celebrity culture

In November 2014 TIME magazine nominated ‘feminist’ in its annual ‘word banishment poll’ to identify and denounce the most overused words, phrases, diminutives and acronyms of the year; thereby pla...

Medusa's stare: celebrity, subjectivity and gender

This article posits the argument that celebrity culture is gendered both in its production and consumption of fame and that this has, historically at least, been rather neglected within studies of celebrity. A key problematic within this is the role of subjectivity and the ways in which contemporary celebrity culture is both sold to and consumed by the sexes rather differently. This rests initially on a re-reading of Marxist analyses of object-based commodity fetishism but turns on a more Foucauldian understanding of subjectivity within contemporary celebrity culture. A content analysis of three leading celebrity magazines in the UK – heat, Hello! and OK! – is offered, demonstrating a clear demarcation of topics deemed to be of interest to the target young female reader and a narrow remit for their subjective engagement centred on looks, fashion and relationships. David and Victoria Beckham are also compared for the ways in which they also reaffirm this sense of demarcation of gendered difference, despite their positioning within a similar mediatised celebrity world. The relative paucity of empirical research on how men and women consume celebrity is something that needs to be addressed, yet the need to highlight gendered difference in the production and consumption of contemporary celebrity culture remains.

Professor Goes Gaga: Teaching Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame

This paper presents an account of the conditions and consequences of a university-level teaching experience in the sociology of fame centered on the case of Lady Gaga. When the course “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame” at the University of South Carolina was announced in the autumn of 2010, it became the number-one Lady Gaga news story, reported and discussed in a wide variety of internet sources and media outlets across the world. The unprecedented attention devoted to the course placed its instructor in an unexpected and unique position to experience various dimensions of contemporary celebrity culture while teaching on that very subject matter. This paper offers a sociological autobiography to discuss this experience as a manifestation of the reflexivity of social knowledge and the interplay between sociology and society.

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

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.

‘The purpose of these acting exercises’: the Actors’ Studio and the labours of celebrity

Celebrity studies has paid attention to the post-modernisation of identity in contemporary celebrity culture; but the ways in which modern discourses of acting-as-work have persisted vis-à-vis larger socio-cultural shifts in both labour and self-performance deserve closer attention. Drawing upon the work of Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello and Ernest Sternberg, this essay explores the shifting styles of self-presentation that are bound up with the history of the Actors' Studio's star and celebrity texts, paying particular attention to the ways in which ‘Method’ actors have been represented as workers. It first argues that the self-presentational style inscribed by the promotional and pedagogical discourses of Method acting circa 1955 can be located within a distinctly modern performance paradigm. It then considers how, although a similar style of self-performance seems to be articulated on the television series Inside the Actors’ Studio (ITAS) the programme's evocation of the Studio's brand of authenticity is, rather, a pastiche performed according to the logic of what Andrew Wernick has called ‘promotional culture’. Thus, whereas the discourse around the Studio in the 1950s positioned Method celebrities as efficiently authentic stars and actors (cf. deCordova), ITAS is concerned ostensibly with the celebration of performers who excel at synergistic visibility.

Technological taxidermy: Recognisable faces in celebrity deaths

In contemporary celebrity culture it would appear that there is a media obsession with exposing all facets of lifestyles pertaining to the famous. It is not surprising, therefore, that a similar preoccupation is evident when the famous die, and narratives surrounding the deaths of Jade Goody, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson in 2009 alone are sources of continued fascination within visual culture. This paper investigates how death is made visible whilst documenting dead celebrities and questions whether the camera discloses all facets relating to the presence of death. Using news coverage of George Best's death in November 2005 and Princess Diana in September 1997, this study highlights an embalming process that is the essence of most media coverage when celebrities die. In order to develop these issues, the study will also deconstruct the visibility of the celebrity corpse in the postmortem image of Marilyn Monroe, Diana's spectral resurrection in the promotional image of The Queen (Harries, Langan, & Frears, 2006) and examine the aesthetic representation of Jade Goody's face-in-death. Contrary to Foltyn's (2008) premise that the corpse has become ‘the star of the show’ (p. 153) within media representations, this study suggests that when celebrities die, it is generally their living incarnation that assumes centre stage in media coverage. The authentic face of death is primarily displaced in favour of a recognisable famous visage that assumes characteristics of the immortal.

The ‘place’ of television in celebrity studies

Despite its centrality in the production, circulation and consumption of contemporary celebrity culture, the detailed study of television fame has occupied a relatively marginal place in star/celebrity studies. Early work on television fame originated from film studies, or was generally defined ‘against’ the concept of film stardom. This meant that it was often characterised negatively: the apparent specificities or qualities of TV fame were defined in pejorative terms, and it was imagined in terms of what it was not (‘film’ stardom proper). The subsequent expansion of celebrity studies has arguably placed less emphasis on the specificity of media forms and boundaries – in part reflecting the fluid and pervasive circulation of contemporary media fame. We suggest here that this has created a conceptual context in which the real complexities of TV fame have fallen between the analytical cracks. This article thus seeks to explore the ways in which television fame has been positioned within star/celebrity studies, while also examining how a range of historical and contemporary studies can illuminate the possibilities and challenges for the future study of TV fame.