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Abstract
Celebrity studies critiques the ways in which celebrity culture constructs discourses of authenticity and disclosure, offering the cultural and economic circulation of the ‘private’ self. Rarely, however, do we turn the spotlight on ourselves as not only scholars of stardom and celebrity, but also part of the audience. Autoethnography has become increasingly important across different disciplines, although its status within media and cultural studies is less visible and secure, not least because the emphasis on personal attachments to media forms may threaten the discipline’s still contested claim to cultural legitimacy. The study of stars and celebrities has often found itself at the ‘lower’ end of this already debased continuum, perhaps making such tensions particularly acute. Based on three personal narratives of engagements with stars and celebrities, this co-authored article explores the potential relationships between autoethnography and celebrity studies, and considers the personal, intellectual, and political implications of bringing the scholar into the celebrity frame.
Notes
1. http://www.b-eat.co.uk/about-beat/media-centre/facts-and-figures/ [Accessed 29 September 2014].
2. From ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face’, My Fair Lady. Music by Frederick Loewe and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Performed by Rex Harrison.
3. http://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/may/26/interview-linda-ruth-williams [Accessed 9 November 2014].
4. www.watchingwithmother.co.uk [Accessed 25 November 2014].
5. http://www.iwcp.co.uk/news/beating-bags-wont-wrap-up-our-ills-18652.aspx [Accessed 10 November 2014].
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Su Holmes
Su Holmes is Reader in Television at the University of East Anglia, UK. She is the author of British TV and Film Culture in the 1950s (Intellect, 2005), Entertaining TV: The BBC and Popular Programme Culture in the 1950s (MUP, 2008) and The Quiz Show (EUP, 2008). She is also the co-editor of Understanding Reality TV (Routledge, 2004), Framing Celebrity (Routledge, 2006), Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader (Sage, 2007) and In the Limelight and Under the Microscope: Forms and Functions of Female Celebrity (Continuum, 2011). She has recently been working on feminist approaches to eating disorders, as well as historical research into British children’s television.
Sarah Ralph
Sarah Ralph is a research associate in the School of Art, Media and American Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK, working on the AHRC-funded research project ‘Make Me Laugh: Creativity in the British Television Comedy industry’ (2012–2015). Her research and teaching interests centre on empirical methods and approaches to the study of production cultures, media audiences and reception. She is an editorial board member of Participations and one of the research team on the ‘Remembering Alien’ audience project.
Sean Redmond
Sean Redmond is an Associate Professor in Media and Communication at Deakin University, Australia. He has research interests in film and television aesthetics, film and television genre, film authorship, film sound, stardom and celebrity, and film phenomenology. He convenes the Melbourne-based Eye-tracking the Moving Image Research group, and the Science Fiction Research group at Deakin University. He has published nine books including The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano: Flowering Blood (Columbia, 2013) and Celebrity and the Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). With Su Holmes, he edits the journal Celebrity Studies, short-listed for best new academic journal in 2011.