Celebrity

Question 1

How does post structuralism see the celebrity?

Answer 1

See’s celebrity as a cultural construction which itself is a field of production with celebs being ‘made’ by the cultural industries

• Instagram celebrities, technology, vlogger
• Celebs are used to represent social reality and celebrities are used by audiences for their own purposes
• The idea that in our society we use celebrities to make sense of the world and to construct our sense of personal identity

Question 2

How can the celebrity be seen as a democracy?

Answer 2

• The emergence of the celebrity as a public preoccupation is the result of three major intertwined historical processes
  1. democratisation of society
  2. The decline in organised religon
  3. The commodification of everyday life, the decline in court society
• Reality tv, the kardashians, the modern world gods, idolised

Question 3

What does Stacey (1994) say about celebrity?

Answer 3

Argued that the meaning audiences place on celebrities is linked to a sense of escapism

Question 4

What does Dyer (1994) say about celebrity?

Answer 4

That a celebrity must resonate with the ideas, values and spirit of the time

Question 5

How do the structuralists see the celebrity?

Answer 5

An expression of universal structural rules embedded in human culture

Question 6

How do Marxists and frankfurt school see the celeb?

Answer 6

Organised entertainment is a form of control
-The idea that the celebrity is used to justify and conceal class inequalities and confilct

Question 7

What does Michael Foucault say about governmentality and the celebrity?

Answer 7

Says that the way individuals voluntarily and productively define their personal identity in terms of their wider political order which is expressed through social discourse based around the celebrity
for example: sportsmen being associated with self discipline, training and material success

Question 8

What is Graeme Turners Demotic turn?

Answer 8

Celebrification as a generally positive process which raises social aspiration whilst reducing differences and breaching the barrier of class and gender

Question 9

What is the celetoid?

Answer 9

Any form of compressed concentrated attributed celebrity, the accessories of cultures organised around mass communication and staged authenticity

example is Jade Goody- Jade goody’s selling point is entertaining her ignorance, the public had a difficult time describing her
“She was famous for being made famous”

“Her apparent intellectual ignorance voice and over weight body were marked negatively as working class”

Her rise to fame was exemplified by her “working class”
attributes

Question 10

What is the concept of celeb vulnerability?

Answer 10

The idea that the modern celebrity must show their vulnerability in order to be regarded as authentic

Question 11

What is the ordinary/extraordinary paradox?

Answer 11

The audience seem both to want their celebrity to be aspirational and socially distant but also have modes of vulnerability and ordinary lives