Celebrity and the MediaKey Concerns in Media Studies
Series editor: Andrew Crisell
Within the context of todays global, digital environment, Key Concerns in Media Studies addresses themes and concepts that are integral to the study of media. Concisely written by leading academics, the book consider the historical development of these themes and the theories that underpin them, and assess their overall significance, using up-to-date examples and case studies throughout. By giving a clear overview of each topic, the series provides an ideal starting point for all students of modern media.
Published
Paul Bowman Culture and the Media
Andrew Crisell Liveness and Recording in the Media
Tim Dwyer Legal and Ethical Issues in the Media
Gerard Goggin New Technologies and the Media
David Hendy Public Service Broadcasting
Shaun Moores Media, Place and Mobility
Sarah Niblock Media Professionalism and Training
Sean Redmond Celebrity and the Media
Forthcoming
Steve Cross Religion and the Media
Terry Flew and Stuart Cunningham Media Economics
Gerard Goggin and Kathleen Ellis Disability and the Media
Brian McNair News Media
Monika Metykova Ethnicity and the Media
Kate ORiordan Science and the Media
Niall Richardson and Sadie Wearing Gender and the Media
Sue Turnbull Media Audiences
Celebrity and the Media
Sean Redmond
Sean Redmond 2014
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First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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To my Father, Peter Redmond, for singing Danny Boy,badly. To my children, Joshua, Caitlin, Erin, Dylan, andCael, for your wayward ways, and for your refusal toaccept the word no. Dance. To Jodi, my love, for givingme the key to exit the loneliness room.Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Jodi Sita for thinking through the small and big ideas of this book. In particular, her insightful comments on the metronome allowed me to see and hear it more clearly not only out there in the world made of celebrity, but in me, the man made in the image of celebrity culture.
I would like to thank John Downie for the daily car journey conversations that allowed me to understand melancholy more fully, life more easily, and to see myself outside of the loneliness room.
I would like to thank those who discuss celebrity culture with me on a regular basis and whose conversations have impacted on how I see and hear celebrity: Su Holmes, David Marshall, Kim Barbour, Tamara Heaney, and Allison Maplesden.
I would like to thank Craig Batty for so beautifully sensing Zac Efron.
The sections, Bieber Fever and The Passion Play had their first airings as blog items on CSTonline.
The Celebrity Metronome
I am on thetreadmill at the gym trying to loose fat, increase my muscle, and harden my body like a wrestling Mickey Rourke. In front of me are a row of plasma TV screens all switched to different channels with their sound turned off. On each and every channel there is a celebrity show being aired: Judge Judy, E! News, an action flick starring Bruce Willis, a cable cosmetics show fronted by a television personality I know the face of but not the name, a Rihanna music video, an episode of Two and a Half Men, a local news bulletin anchored by a celebrity journalist, and a replay of a Barcelona soccer game where the demi-god, Lionel Messi, scores a hat-trick.
As I run my eyes switch from one screen to the next, glancing at the row of celebrity figures before me. As my pace quickens, the TV screens take on the enchanted form of a celebrity metronome, my own perception caught in a regular and regulated swing. I see modern life itself griped by the metronomes fixed beat, by the quiet pulse of auratic bodies that fill the swinging screens. I see the celebrity metronome beating across all of time and space, bringing to the world the everywhere of celebrity culture. This I tell myself is the age of the celebrity metronome. And I run more quickly.
I Will Always Love you
Ask yourself these framing questions about Whitney Houstons death on 11 February 2011:
How did you first hear about her death?
Where did you go to confirm the details, to learn more about the tragic event?
Was it through Facebook or Twitter, on a mobile device as you travelled through town?
How did you respond, who did you talk to, or where did you post about her death?
Where did you hear her songs being played and images of her celebrity circulated?
Did her songs sound out on radios, tablets, and mobile phones; in shopping malls; and on music channels, so that her soprano voice seemed to permeate all around you ?
Did you follow the outcry that greeted Sony raising the download price of Whitneys anthem, I Will Always Love You ?
What type of narrative about her life emerged across the media?
How was Bobby Brown portrayed?
Were race, drugs, and religion a core part of the rise-and-fall narrative trajectory employed to define Houstons life and death?
What types of emotional reactions did the media countenance?
Did you feel moved or manipulated by the media representation of her death?
Why did she dominate the news, the front pages of magazines, tribute shows, the posts and tweets that rolled off Facebook and Twitter over the period from her death to her funeral?
Why did Whitney Houstons death seem to matter?
For the most part, in answering these questions you will see that Houston encapsulates what celebrity involves, and how it functions like a mechanical metronome moving in and between media platforms, social interactions, and ritualised events, with similar stories, representations, reactions, and emotions being aligned and activated. In a very real sense, Whitneys death is produced, scripted, given a media representation, and is understood to be felt in particular heightened ways by fans and consumers.
