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Abstract
Academic study of celebrity has hitherto been mostly based on the assumption that celebrities are human, and even semiotic theories of celebrity have been built around the notion that a ‘real person’ exists at its centre. In this paper I problematise this notion by discussing the case of animal celebrities, who lack many of the characteristics associated with celebrity and yet are discursively constituted as such by media and their audiences. I propose a taxonomy of animal celebrities and present detailed studies of three recent cases, all based in Germany, where captive animals have been celebritised by national and international media. Focusing on the collective mechanics of press and publicity, I demonstrate the operation of the celebrity/celebrification process and discuss the implications this has for our understandings of celebrity in general.
Notes
1. Rojek does, however, leave open the possibility of the object of desire being non-human, simply ‘animate’.
2. Pickles came to a decidedly inglorious end the following year, throttled by his own lead while climbing a tree in pursuit of a cat (Jackson Citation2006).
3. Pre-2010 Paul media archives are somewhat sketchy. While the official Sea Life line is that he made numerous correct predictions of matches in the 2008 European Championship finals, online coverage from that period is barren. The earliest reports I have managed to unearth are those from late June 2010 relating to his backing of Germany in the forthcoming match against England.
4. The Life and Times of Paul the Psychic Octopus, slated for release in summer 2012, is the result of a collaboration between the Denver-based Cinema Vertige and Merlin Entertainments (the owners of the Sea Life chain). The film is to be directed by Alexandre Phillipe (The People vs. George Lucas), and the trailer promises high comedy, with tongue-in-cheek contributions from various mathematicians, one of whom delivers the line ‘The possibility is that this is beyond chance’.
5. Bartsch is described by Grix (Citation2010) as a ‘zootierfängerin’, literally a ‘capturer of zoo animals’.
6. When Paul's story first broke worldwide, the head of animal care at Weymouth's Sea Life Centre was reported as saying that Paul was sold to Oberhausen four years previously (Goater Citation2010). However, most experts cited in the course of Paul's media coverage have put a limit of two years on the average life expectancy of octopuses.
7. They were all beaten by an elephant called Nelly from Hodenhagen, who correctly predicted all six fixtures involving the host nation (ARD Citation2011).
8. As yet, no one has claimed responsibility for the graffiti, leaving open any number of Barnumesque possibilities.
9. The Süddeutsche Zeitung is based in Bavaria, in the south of Germany.
10. ‘Knut wird darum vielleicht kein richtiger Bär werden, aber jedenfalls ein Berliner’ (Knut may not after all be a real bear, but he is undoubtedly a Berliner).
11. See (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBLizhD_0R4) for a typical example.
12. ‘Heidi is so sweet/how nice that she is with us [lit: is there]’.
13. ‘Teilte der Zoo Leipzig mit, dass Heidi eingeschläfert werden musste.’
14. The German connection would seem to be largely coincidental, except that Germany does have a very high number of zoos (over 400) and Berlin is officially the world's largest, so animals would be expected to have a higher media profile than in other countries. Selecting all three cases from the same country made comparison easier since the animals’ celebrity originated from coverage in the same national media.
