Kim McNamara - Paparazzi: Media Practices and Celebrity Culture

KIM MCNAMARA

polity

Copyright Kim McNamara 2016

The right of Kim McNamara to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2016 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-9808-3

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McNamara, Kim.

Paparazzi : media practices and celebrity culture / Kim McNamara.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7456-5173-6 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-0-7456-5174-3 (paperback) 1.

Photojournalism. 2. Hidden camera photography. 3. Paparazzi. 4. Celebrities. 5. Popular culture. I. Title.

TR820.M36 2015

770--dc23

2015016117

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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

I have one of my PhD thesis reviewers, Nick Couldry, to thank for encouraging me to pursue the proposal idea for this book. I am very grateful for Nicks help and insight both in our personal meetings and in his written ideas. Thanks also go to Nick for connecting me with Andrea Drugan at Polity. I thank her for her intelligence, thoughtfulness and patience. I am also grateful to the anonymous referees whose constructive comments have helped shape the book.

Appreciation and thanks also to Elen Griffiths and Neil de Cort at Polity, and to Helen Gray, for all their help.

Thank you to all the photographers, agency managers and photo editors I spoke with. I am grateful for their enthusiasm and trust. Although not all contacts I interviewed were quoted, every participant helped to create the conceptual ideas and historical mappings of the book. In particular, thank you to Chris Doherty of INF for permission to use the images in this book.

Heartfelt thanks to Michelle Momdjian, for draft-reading the manuscript and for her endless cheerleading, and to Carol McNeill, for all her love and support.

To my beautiful Mum and Dad, your love has always helped me. Thank you for everything.

And most of all, to Donald and Maya, my best friends. I love you. Thank you both for your patience, inspiration, cuddles and fun times. Spoibz.

A small amount of material in the book has been previously published.

were first published in: McNamara, K. (2009), Publicizing Private Lives: Celebrities, Image Control, and the Reconfiguration of Public Space, Social and Cultural Geography 10/1: 923.

Some sections of first appeared in: McNamara, K. (2011), The Paparazzi Industry and New Media: The Evolving Production and Consumption of Celebrity News and Gossip Websites, International Journal of Cultural Studies 14/5: 51530.

The word paparazzi often elicits strong reactions. Their popular reputation has them either skulking in bushes or crouching on balconies trying to take an invasive shot of a public figure; or else they are uncontrollable urban hooligans, charging down streets in crowds, or pursuing people in dangerous high-speed car chases. The industry is often seen as a male-dominated one, which at times becomes aggressive and frightening for the subjects. Finally, their output tends to be associated with some of the worst excesses of tabloid culture, sensationalism and triviality.

However, this stereotype of the paparazzi is one that needs to be revisited. My contention in the book is that paparazzi images have become of increasing importance within popular culture. They are a fascinating aspect of contemporary society situated between conventional photographic practice, the economy of news production and societys interest in celebrity (Chroux 2014b). For example, for Carol Squiers, paparazzi photography occupies a seemingly unique position outside the bounds of polite photography, defined by its self-admitted characteristics of aggression and stealthiness, narrow range of subjects, and elastic formal definitions of what constitutes a good picture (1999: 271).

This book is neither a coruscating attack on the paparazzi industry nor an apology for some of its wilder excesses. Instead, it seeks to throw light on one of the least understood elements of todays global entertainment business. Paparazzi agencies and photographers are responsible for images that circulate worldwide, ranging from iconic shots of Hollywood movie stars, to barely noticed content filler for magazines and newspapers from Brazil to Australia, Italy to Canada. Where celebrities go, paparazzi are sure to follow close behind. Their constant mobility matches the often negative public perception of them as fly-by-night or somehow shady.

To approach this as a research problem requires an engagement with the wider nature of celebrity and publicity, the industrial practices and work cultures of contemporary media work and the changing nature of photography as a commercial activity. Throughout the book, I bring three distinct fields together: the production of celebrity as an industry; the nature of contemporary journalism and media production as a practice; and the place of paparazzi within the various branches of the photography profession.

First, it is impossible to understand the nature of paparazzi without a grasp of celebrity as an industry. As scholars such as Gamson (1994) and Turner et al. (2000) have shown, this involves identifying the multiple agents who actively cultivate the recognizability of particular actors, politicians and sports stars. This ranges from celebrity stylists and the organizers of junkets, through to entertainment journalists and agents. Certainly, this was always part of the earlier Hollywood star system. But as Joshua Gamson argues in his book Claims to Fame, there has been a growing awareness among audiences of the tremendously heightened self-consciousness about the systematic production of celebrity and celebrity images for commercial purposes (Gamson 1994: 48; Marshall 1997, 2006, 2014). For many armchair fans or celebrity watchers, the paparazzi are part and parcel of what celebrity is about (Bajac 2014).

In recent years, there have been a number of very high-profile court cases, ranging from those which revealed very genuine concerns about privacy intrusion (the phone-tapping scandal which engulfed Rupert Murdochs News of the World) to the more contestable (the legal battle over who, if anyone, owned the exclusive rights to images of the wedding of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas), or even laughable (Barbra Streisands ill-advised attempt to bar geological survey aerial photography which included her property). It was well known in gossip circles and the industry that celebrities varied significantly in their opinions and behaviour towards paparazzi, with many enjoying a degree of rapport and mutual recognition, and a realization that being shot naturally as they bought coffee or walked their dog would give them much-needed and free publicity.