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Blog Assignment 1: Dissecting Popular Celebrity

Posted: August 30, 2010 at 8:00 am | Tags: Celebrity

The readings for today get at the heart of the course aims. O’Shaugnessy & Stadler provide a theoretical framework for understanding the star system. Collins explains the impact of reality TV on celebrity politics. Ellcessor shifts the analysis from reality tv to social media. As you take notes toward your first graded post on your individual blogs, pay attention to following concepts:

From O’Shaugnessy & Stadler:

Cult of celebrity

Star v. Celebrity

The “discursive” vs, “market” constructions of celebrity

The three ways stars operate in the media industry: 1) financial commodities 2) texts/image; and 3) embodiment of sociological/ideological values

Primary v. secondary circulation (types of publicity)

Identification

Fandom

Interpellation

Effect of technology

From Collins:

Reality TV as the performance of the “everyday”

Democratization of celebrity

Economic function of “disposable” celebrity

The paradox of more celebrity (p. 95)

Deficit financing

Authenticity

Three things that the power of a star/celebrity depends on: 1) visibility; 2) spectacle; 3) image

From Ellcessor:

Asymmetrical nature of Twitter

Intimacy potential for fans (including beyond traditional celebrity)

Social capital

Prompt for your first assigned Pop Academy post: Consider your own love/hate relationship with celebrity. Since we all have different tastes regarding popular culture, some of us may love particular actors or directors. Others admire sports figures, politicians, musicians, bloggers, reporters and so on. I’m sure I’ve left a category out. Feel free to add to my list. However, some of us may actually despise particular famous people or celebrity in general. If so, I’m not sure you’re in the right class. Still, this may provide you a good critical eye to discuss topics this term. Pick a particular celebrity in one of the aforementioned fields (or choose your own if it’s not listed). In about 375 words explain the public persona of your celebrity. How do the key terms from the readings come into play? For example, is your chosen person a star or a celebrity? What types of financial and cultural commodities surround your person? What ideological values do they employ? What image do they construct/is constructed for them? In your experience, how are fans interpellated into the discourse of this persona? How has reality TV and/or social media (i.e. democratized media forms) impacted image construction and fan identification? I know these are lots of questions that you may not be able to fit complete answers to in a single post. As such, give me your most articulate, thoughtful, grammatically correct shot at least one or two of these questions, where you ACTIVELY connect to concepts in the readings. Answer the remainder of questions, and of course pose your own, on Twitter and in class. Don’t forget to use #comm326 in your course-related tweets. (Original post due by the beginning of class Sept. 1 with comments to others’ blogs due Sept. 6.)