Su Holmes - Framing Celebrity: New directions in celebrity culture

Framing Celebrity

Celebrity culture has a pervasive presence in our everyday lives perhaps more so than ever before. It shapes not simply the production and consumption of media content but also the social values through which we experience the world. This collection analyses this phenomenon, bringing together essays which explore celebrity across a range of media, cultural and political contexts.

The authors investigate topics such as the intimacy of fame, political celebrity, stardom in American quality television (Sarah Jessica Parker), celebrity reality TV (Im a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!), the circulation of the porn star, the gallery film (David/David Beckham), the concept of cartoon celebrity (The Simpsons), fandom and celebrity (k.d. lang, *NSYNC), celebrity in the tabloid press, celebrity magazines (heat, Celebrity Skins), the fame of the serial killer and narratives of mental illness in celebrity culture.

The collection is organized into four themed sections. Fame Now broadly examines the contemporary contours of fame as they course through new media sites (such as reality TV and the internet) and different social, cultural and political spaces. Fame Body attempts to situate the star or celebrity body at the centre of the production, circulation and consumption of contemporary fame. Fame Simulation considers the increasingly strained relationship between celebrity and artifice and authenticity. Fame Damage looks at the way the representation of fame is bound up with auto-destructive tendencies or dissolution.

Dr Su Holmes is Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Kent. She is the author of British TV and Film Culture in the 1950s: Coming to a TV Near You! (2005) and co-editor of Understanding Reality Television (Routledge, 2004).

Dr Sean Redmond is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Victoria, Wellington, New Zealand. He is the co-editor of The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor (2003) and the editor of Liquid Metal: The Reader in Science Fiction Film (2004).

Framing Celebrity

New directions in celebrity culture

Edited by Su Holmes and Sean Redmond

First published 2006

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Ave, New York NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Transferred to Digital Printing 2010

Editorial material and selection 2006 Su Holmes & Sean Redmond
Individual essays 2006 the contributors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Framing celebrity : new directions in celebrity culture/edited by Su Holmes and Sean Redmond

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-415-37709-9 (hardback : alk. paper) ISBN 0-415-37710-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Popular cultureUnited States. 2. Celebrities in mass media. 3. Mass media Social aspectsUnited States. I. Holmes, Su. II. Redmond, Sean, 1967 E169.Z83F68 2006

ISBN10: 0-415-37709-9 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0-415-37710-2 (pbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-37709-6 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-37710-2 (pbk)

Contents

SU HOLMES AND SEAN REDMOND

SU HOLMES AND SEAN REDMOND

SEAN REDMOND

SU HOLMES

DEBORAH JERMYN

PHILIP DRAKE AND MICHAEL HIGGINS

MATT HILLS

SU HOLMES AND SEAN REDMOND

DAVID MAGILL

JOHN MERCER

ADAM KNEE

REBECCA FEASEY

RAMONA COLEMAN-BELL

SU HOLMES AND SEAN REDMOND

ADRIENNE LAI

SUZANNE RINTOUL

CATHERINE FOWLER

KRISTINA BUSSE

JUDITH FRANCO

SU HOLMES AND SEAN REDMOND

DAVID SCHMID

STEPHEN HARPER

SHEILA WHITELEY

SOFIA JOHANSSON

Illustrations

Part openings

Chapters

Notes on Contributors

Kristina Busse teaches at the University of South Alabama. She has written a variety of essays on fan fiction and has co-edited the the essay collection Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet (McFarland, 2006).

Ramona Coleman-Bell is a doctoral candidate in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. Her research interests range across representations of race and gender in American media and culture, and African American literature. She is the author of Narrating Nation: Exploring the Space of Americanness and the Place of African American Women through the Works of June Jordan, in Valerie Kinloch and Margret Grebowicz (eds), Still Seeking an Attitude: Critical Reflections on the Work of June Jordan (Boulder, CO: Lexington Books, 2004).

Philip Drake is a Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at the University of Stirling. He has published numerous articles on celebrity and stardom, screen performance, memory and film music, and intellectual property rights. He is currently writing a book on the political economy of stardom in Hollywood cinema and is co-editing a forthcoming edition of the journal Cultural Politics on the politics of celebrity.

Rebecca Feasey is a Lecturer in Film and Media Communications at Bath Spa University. She has published in the areas of cult film and the contemporary star system, and is currently writing about reader-responses to celebrity gossip magazines. She has contributed articles on the politics of taste to Mark Jancovich (ed.), The Cult Film Experience (Routledge, 2003), and Julian Stringer (ed.), Movie Blockbusters (Routledge, 2003).

Catherine Fowler is a Senior Lecturer in Film at Otago University, New Zealand. Her research interests include women filmmakers, European cinema and the film/art axis of influence. She is the editor of The European Cinema Reader (Routledge, 2002).

Judith Franco is a Senior Lecturer in the department of Arts, Media and Technology at the Utrecht School of the Arts (the Netherlands), where she teaches courses on cultural studies, film and television genres, and feminist theory. She has published in Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Quarterly Review of Film Studies and other collected works.

Stephen Harper is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Portsmouth. His research focuses on health issues in the media and on gender representation. He has also published articles and edited books in the area of cult film, including Theyre Us: Representations of Women in George Romeros Living Dead Series,