Pub Date : 2022-08-09DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2022.2109311
Eva Maria Schörgenhuber
ABSTRACT This paper aims to investigate representations of celebrities’ children and childhood in the context of the US during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores how discourses around the famous offspring serve social and cultural functions within the celebrity context and beyond. The increased exposure of children in celebrities’ homes has created kinship ties through a strengthening of parasocial relationships through the performance and illusion of intimacy. Furthermore, this paper aims at understanding the larger implications of discourses around celebrities’ children in the US context. By employing Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of retrotopia, it will be argued that representations of celebrities’ children can be seen as idealised versions of the present which harken back to an imagined, romanticised past. This will be read in light of a current moment that is marked by precarious living conditions and national crises, the COVID-19 pandemic only being the most current one. Moreover, Lauren Berlant’s idea of national sentimentality will be used to show that these representations can also be seen as visions of futurity. It will be demonstrated how narratively and visually embedded illusions of intimacy create a glorified image of childhood and construct childhood and family as a place of comfort, refuge, and thereby futurity.
{"title":"Meet our baby: celebrities’ children and childhood between comfort, refuge, and futurity","authors":"Eva Maria Schörgenhuber","doi":"10.1080/19392397.2022.2109311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2109311","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper aims to investigate representations of celebrities’ children and childhood in the context of the US during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores how discourses around the famous offspring serve social and cultural functions within the celebrity context and beyond. The increased exposure of children in celebrities’ homes has created kinship ties through a strengthening of parasocial relationships through the performance and illusion of intimacy. Furthermore, this paper aims at understanding the larger implications of discourses around celebrities’ children in the US context. By employing Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of retrotopia, it will be argued that representations of celebrities’ children can be seen as idealised versions of the present which harken back to an imagined, romanticised past. This will be read in light of a current moment that is marked by precarious living conditions and national crises, the COVID-19 pandemic only being the most current one. Moreover, Lauren Berlant’s idea of national sentimentality will be used to show that these representations can also be seen as visions of futurity. It will be demonstrated how narratively and visually embedded illusions of intimacy create a glorified image of childhood and construct childhood and family as a place of comfort, refuge, and thereby futurity.","PeriodicalId":46401,"journal":{"name":"Celebrity Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45698283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-08DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2022.2109297
Aysın Ece Acar
ABSTRACT Since the beginning of her career in the 1980s, Seda Sayan has become one of the biggest popular culture icons in Turkey, sustaining a multifaceted career in entertainment that includes singing, acting, and, most influentially, television. Sayan’s career trajectory from wedding singer to the ‘Sultan of the Mornings’ illustrates how the Turkish celebrity industry works, and the evolution of her persona as a talk show host tracks the development of the genre format in Turkey. This article considers Seda Sayan’s daytime talk shows in order to better understand how she built her televisual empire among strong competition to become an exceptional force in Turkish television history. Her shows illustrate identity construction practices over time and have secured her place in Turkish entertainment. Taking this chapter in Sayan’s career as its case study, this article offers a brief introduction to the operations of celebrity culture and contemporary media industries in Turkey.
{"title":"Sultan of the mornings: Seda Sayan and daytime talk shows in Turkey","authors":"Aysın Ece Acar","doi":"10.1080/19392397.2022.2109297","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2109297","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since the beginning of her career in the 1980s, Seda Sayan has become one of the biggest popular culture icons in Turkey, sustaining a multifaceted career in entertainment that includes singing, acting, and, most influentially, television. Sayan’s career trajectory from wedding singer to the ‘Sultan of the Mornings’ illustrates how the Turkish celebrity industry works, and the evolution of her persona as a talk show host tracks the development of the genre format in Turkey. This article considers Seda Sayan’s daytime talk shows in order to better understand how she built her televisual empire among strong competition to become an exceptional force in Turkish television history. Her shows illustrate identity construction practices over time and have secured her place in Turkish entertainment. Taking this chapter in Sayan’s career as its case study, this article offers a brief introduction to the operations of celebrity culture and contemporary media industries in Turkey.","PeriodicalId":46401,"journal":{"name":"Celebrity Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48428414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-05DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2022.2109304
Anna Debinski
ABSTRACT What is it about girl stars, from Shirley Temple to Jodie Foster, that intensely and ambivalently capture the cultural imagination? I argue that child stars, often described as transitioning into adulthood too quickly or staying too long in childhood, challenge damaging social norms of bodily and behavioural development in ways that are sympathetic to disability experience. I use disability studies’ theory of ‘crip time’ and Kathryn Bond Stockton’s notion of the political potential of children ‘growing sideways’ alongside the case study of Patty Duke to demonstrate this productive subversiveness. Duke’s star persona, centred on her portrayal of the young deaf, blind, and uncommunicative Helen Keller in William Gibson’s Broadway play and Arthur Penn’s subsequent film, reveals the parallel developmental non-normativity of disability and child stardom.Through contradictory primary and paratextual evidence surrounding The Miracle Worker and Duke’s stardom, the application of crip time to notions of childhood celebrity, and a contextual understanding of public discourse surrounding childhood during the 1960s, I find that Duke and her characterisation of Keller embody a rejection of conventional understandings of ‘growing up’. Duke’s ambivalent childhood celebrity fractures the constructed ideal of normal development, revealing possibilities for valuable experience beyond the pressures of ableist notions of linear growth.
{"title":"Challenging normalcy through stardom: childhood celebrity, disability, and Patty Duke’s Helen Keller","authors":"Anna Debinski","doi":"10.1080/19392397.2022.2109304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2109304","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT What is it about girl stars, from Shirley Temple to Jodie Foster, that intensely and ambivalently capture the cultural imagination? I argue that child stars, often described as transitioning into adulthood too quickly or staying too long in childhood, challenge damaging social norms of bodily and behavioural development in ways that are sympathetic to disability experience. I use disability studies’ theory of ‘crip time’ and Kathryn Bond Stockton’s notion of the political potential of children ‘growing sideways’ alongside the case study of Patty Duke to demonstrate this productive subversiveness. Duke’s star persona, centred on her portrayal of the young deaf, blind, and uncommunicative Helen Keller in William Gibson’s Broadway play and Arthur Penn’s subsequent film, reveals the parallel developmental non-normativity of disability and child stardom.Through contradictory primary and paratextual evidence surrounding The Miracle Worker and Duke’s stardom, the application of crip time to notions of childhood celebrity, and a contextual understanding of public discourse surrounding childhood during the 1960s, I find that Duke and her characterisation of Keller embody a rejection of conventional understandings of ‘growing up’. Duke’s ambivalent childhood celebrity fractures the constructed ideal of normal development, revealing possibilities for valuable experience beyond the pressures of ableist notions of linear growth.","PeriodicalId":46401,"journal":{"name":"Celebrity Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43407630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-03DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2022.2109303
Brett Farmer
ABSTRACT This paper analyses the juvenile career of Julie Andrews who was a child performer of considerable note in her native Britain during the immediate post-war period. Possessed of a remarkably developed singing voice, Andrews was feted as a musical child prodigy, and she performed widely in variety and radio as ‘Britain’s youngest singing star’. In an era of profound disruption, Andrews’ popular image as national wunderkind served – as the myth of the child star so often it does – as a resonant cultural fiction for the articulation of deeply felt ideological concerns and the fantastic reconciliation of social and emotional anxieties.
{"title":"‘Prima donna in pigtails’: reading the child stardom of Julie Andrews","authors":"Brett Farmer","doi":"10.1080/19392397.2022.2109303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2109303","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper analyses the juvenile career of Julie Andrews who was a child performer of considerable note in her native Britain during the immediate post-war period. Possessed of a remarkably developed singing voice, Andrews was feted as a musical child prodigy, and she performed widely in variety and radio as ‘Britain’s youngest singing star’. In an era of profound disruption, Andrews’ popular image as national wunderkind served – as the myth of the child star so often it does – as a resonant cultural fiction for the articulation of deeply felt ideological concerns and the fantastic reconciliation of social and emotional anxieties.","PeriodicalId":46401,"journal":{"name":"Celebrity Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41483425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-26DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2022.2105165
Q. Guo
ABSTRACT Pairing two male celebrities in both fictional and real-world intimate relationships has become a significant way for Chinese fans to consume celebrities especially over the last decade. Based on unobtrusive observation and semi-structured interviews, this research explores the entanglement and separation of fiction and reality in three CP fandoms pairing actors Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, Jun Hu and Ye Liu, and Yunlong Zheng and Ayanga. The findings show that after first analysing and judging the celebrities’ potential real-world queer relationship as ‘not real’, ‘real but over’, and ‘real and ongoing’ (respectively), CP fans produce further fantasied creations and reality-based discussions centred on enjoying their own pleasure, gaining comfort from their celebrities’ experiences, or fulfiling the responsibility to support their celebrities. As fans increasingly emphasise celebrities’ real-world queer relationships, their CP practices not only reinforce fan-celebrity connections on a personal level but financially benefit their celebrities. Unlike the Western RPS genre that features purely fictional homosexual pairings, Chinese CP fandoms show increasingly prevalent reality-focused variations in celebrity consumption, which have been catered to by the entertainment industry and criticised by the Chinese public.
{"title":"Fiction and reality entangled: Chinese ‘coupling’ (CP) fans pairing male celebrities for pleasure, comfort, and responsibility","authors":"Q. Guo","doi":"10.1080/19392397.2022.2105165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2105165","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Pairing two male celebrities in both fictional and real-world intimate relationships has become a significant way for Chinese fans to consume celebrities especially over the last decade. Based on unobtrusive observation and semi-structured interviews, this research explores the entanglement and separation of fiction and reality in three CP fandoms pairing actors Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, Jun Hu and Ye Liu, and Yunlong Zheng and Ayanga. The findings show that after first analysing and judging the celebrities’ potential real-world queer relationship as ‘not real’, ‘real but over’, and ‘real and ongoing’ (respectively), CP fans produce further fantasied creations and reality-based discussions centred on enjoying their own pleasure, gaining comfort from their celebrities’ experiences, or fulfiling the responsibility to support their celebrities. As fans increasingly emphasise celebrities’ real-world queer relationships, their CP practices not only reinforce fan-celebrity connections on a personal level but financially benefit their celebrities. Unlike the Western RPS genre that features purely fictional homosexual pairings, Chinese CP fandoms show increasingly prevalent reality-focused variations in celebrity consumption, which have been catered to by the entertainment industry and criticised by the Chinese public.","PeriodicalId":46401,"journal":{"name":"Celebrity Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46719612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-10DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2022.2099644
Dusty Gavin
{"title":"Beyoncé in the world: making meaning with Queen Bey in troubled times","authors":"Dusty Gavin","doi":"10.1080/19392397.2022.2099644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2099644","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46401,"journal":{"name":"Celebrity Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44274032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-10DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2022.2099648
Yue Cao
{"title":"Wanghong as Social Media Entertainment in China","authors":"Yue Cao","doi":"10.1080/19392397.2022.2099648","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2099648","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46401,"journal":{"name":"Celebrity Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41727439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-04DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2022.2095923
Olle Sjögren
ABSTRACT In December 2019, a Swedish climate activist was appointed Person of the Year by Time Magazine. Greta Thunberg was only 15 when she inspired a wave of school strikes and protest marches. She stole the media attention at a series of global summits, until public gatherings and international travels were interrupted by the pandemic. The aim of this article is to highlight a short but intense celebritisation process with culture-bound responses. First, I will establish Thunberg’s deep roots in a Nordic children’s culture, which defends bio-diversity with ‘superhoney’ and science. Then, I will compare the strong impact of an ecological Wunderkind in the EU with the polarised reactions in the US. In the conclusion, I will relate Thunberg’s activist strategy and persona to other types of eco-celebrities and discuss the significance of diverging time horizons.
{"title":"Ecological Wunderkind and heroic trollhunter: the celebrity saga of Greta Thunberg","authors":"Olle Sjögren","doi":"10.1080/19392397.2022.2095923","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2095923","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In December 2019, a Swedish climate activist was appointed Person of the Year by Time Magazine. Greta Thunberg was only 15 when she inspired a wave of school strikes and protest marches. She stole the media attention at a series of global summits, until public gatherings and international travels were interrupted by the pandemic. The aim of this article is to highlight a short but intense celebritisation process with culture-bound responses. First, I will establish Thunberg’s deep roots in a Nordic children’s culture, which defends bio-diversity with ‘superhoney’ and science. Then, I will compare the strong impact of an ecological Wunderkind in the EU with the polarised reactions in the US. In the conclusion, I will relate Thunberg’s activist strategy and persona to other types of eco-celebrities and discuss the significance of diverging time horizons.","PeriodicalId":46401,"journal":{"name":"Celebrity Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42782011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2022.2103260
G. Franssen
Supposedly, as the saying goes, it is very lonely at the top. However, one of the many insights that the field of celebrity studies has brought forward is that, in reality, it is very crowded at the top. Celebrities are never really alone and have hardly any privacy: on a daily basis, they are moulded by producers, pressured by public image advisors, harangued by paparazzi, and closely eyed by uncountable fans and often unrelenting critics. Celebrity culture, at its core, is a culture of surveillance: rarely does the star have a moment alone. Little then, that mental distress is part and parcel of being a individual. beings, of can live the same conditions as such as personality disorders or panic attacks. Yet at the same time, they are confronted with forms of mental distress that are arguably the result of their fame. They struggle with high expectations of global audiences, a profound split between their public and private self, and the pressure of being the keystone in global economic infrastructures built around their work and image. This Forum issue brings together two insightful contributions that explore how celebrities deal with such pressures and how their fans and critics respond to it.
{"title":"Gendering mental distress in celebrity culture: introduction","authors":"G. Franssen","doi":"10.1080/19392397.2022.2103260","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2103260","url":null,"abstract":"Supposedly, as the saying goes, it is very lonely at the top. However, one of the many insights that the field of celebrity studies has brought forward is that, in reality, it is very crowded at the top. Celebrities are never really alone and have hardly any privacy: on a daily basis, they are moulded by producers, pressured by public image advisors, harangued by paparazzi, and closely eyed by uncountable fans and often unrelenting critics. Celebrity culture, at its core, is a culture of surveillance: rarely does the star have a moment alone. Little then, that mental distress is part and parcel of being a individual. beings, of can live the same conditions as such as personality disorders or panic attacks. Yet at the same time, they are confronted with forms of mental distress that are arguably the result of their fame. They struggle with high expectations of global audiences, a profound split between their public and private self, and the pressure of being the keystone in global economic infrastructures built around their work and image. This Forum issue brings together two insightful contributions that explore how celebrities deal with such pressures and how their fans and critics respond to it.","PeriodicalId":46401,"journal":{"name":"Celebrity Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42973312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-03DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2022.2083521
Laurie Venters, Alexander D. Rothenberg
ABSTRACT South Korea is well known for its industrialist approach to the creation of idol groups. This article demonstrates the correlation between exploitive managerial practices, widely employed in the production of idols, and their resultant effects on individual autonomy. We first situate the agency-idol system in Korea’s contemporary neoliberal landscape, before proceeding to outline how the recruitment and training of female performers deliberately fosters dependence. Next, we illustrate how bodily shaping — in the form of weight loss and plastic surgery — and objectification serve to delimit personal autonomy. Exacting beauty standards, in turn, contribute to the imposition of highly restrictive somatic identities, affording idols little to no room for agentic experimentation. Increased dependency, in conjunction with the forced assumption of dollified personas, amounts to an effective reduction in autonomous capacity, re-enforcing the notion that K-pop is a site of patriarchal disciplining.
{"title":"Trammelled stars: the non-autonomy of female K-pop idols","authors":"Laurie Venters, Alexander D. Rothenberg","doi":"10.1080/19392397.2022.2083521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2083521","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT South Korea is well known for its industrialist approach to the creation of idol groups. This article demonstrates the correlation between exploitive managerial practices, widely employed in the production of idols, and their resultant effects on individual autonomy. We first situate the agency-idol system in Korea’s contemporary neoliberal landscape, before proceeding to outline how the recruitment and training of female performers deliberately fosters dependence. Next, we illustrate how bodily shaping — in the form of weight loss and plastic surgery — and objectification serve to delimit personal autonomy. Exacting beauty standards, in turn, contribute to the imposition of highly restrictive somatic identities, affording idols little to no room for agentic experimentation. Increased dependency, in conjunction with the forced assumption of dollified personas, amounts to an effective reduction in autonomous capacity, re-enforcing the notion that K-pop is a site of patriarchal disciplining.","PeriodicalId":46401,"journal":{"name":"Celebrity Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41512519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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