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Abstract
In this study, I use ethnographic and interview data to examine the relationship between celebrity impersonators and their audiences—in particular, the ways in which performer and audience work together to maintain an interactional boundary within which the real and the unreal coexist comfortably. Using Goffmanian notions of “frame” and “game,” I propose the existence of a distinctive interactional frame within which audience and performers play a collaborative game. Players know that the real star is not onstage, but willingly suspend this observation of fact, and may even make nimble reference to the unreality of the performance. This analysis extends interdisciplinary appreciation of the interplay of reality and fantasy in everyday life.
Acknowledgements
She wishes to thank all those who made her work in Las Vegas possible and enjoyable, including Margaret Pfeil, Gillian Ferris Kohl, and Jill Stein.
Notes
1. This and all other names contained herein are pseudonyms.
2. Goffman also refers to frame as “membrane” or “boundary” (Encounters 25).
3. It should be noted that the clients are usually the only participants having “fun” during this game.
4. An interesting ethical issue arose in the collection of this data. As directed by my university's Institutional Review Board, I asked each interview respondent to sign a fairly standard consent form. However, the people I interviewed were entertainers, whose success demands a high profile, self-promotion and creative marketing. Almost all of the interview respondents, while reading and signing the form, made some comment about how it really would be okay, and in fact even desirable, if I used their real names. They did not feel that they needed to have their anonymity assured as part of their participation in my research project—in fact they seemed to hold out hope that, by participating, they might somehow gain more recognition in their field. So I found myself in a dilemma—go through the usual semantic contortions in order to maintain the respondents’ confidentiality, or allow them (and their real names and acts) to be part of the finished product? This dilemma is compounded by the fact that impersonation is primarily (though not entirely) a visual accomplishment. But the moment I display a photograph of an impersonator in a presentation or publication, that person's identity (or at least their celebrity impersonator persona) is revealed, and confidentiality is broken. For now, I am bound by the promises of confidentiality my university requires me to make. But there are other options. In their study of drag queens at a Key West nightclub, Rupp and Taylor (Citation2003) disguised neither the location nor the identities of the performers. This was at the performers’ own request—“[t]he drag queens asked that their names be used in the research” (p. 223). The authors offer no further discussion regarding the details of this request (what were the performers’ reasons for making this request; was it delivered en masse or by each individual performer?), nor any discussion of the ethical issues associated with granting the request (would there be any reason—including the demands of a university human subjects committee—to try to talk the performers out of revealing their identities in a study such as this one?). When studying professional performers, it may be the case that customary assurances of confidentiality are neither necessary nor desirable—for the performers or the researchers—and that we as a discipline may choose to rethink the blanket requirements of confidentiality currently associated with human subjects research. There may be cases, such as Rupp and Taylor's drag queens, or these celebrity impersonators, where the respondents should be allowed to make the choice themselves. But in this article, performers are referred to only by their character names.