A journal in Celebrity Studies

Celebrity, the cerebral and ‘pseudo-academic mumbo jumbo’?

When news broke that there would be a journal dedicated to the study of celebrity we had numerous press/media invitations to speak to the rationale behind the project and our scholarly interest in the field. Of course, we were extremely wary of the way the idea would probably be treated, not least because of the wave of media scorn ultimately levelled at a 2008 celebrity conference organised by Su Holmes and Diane Negra at the University of East Anglia, UK, entitled ‘Going cheap?: Female celebrity in the tabloid, reality and scandal genres’ – although the derision here was arguably amplified by the masculine, patriarchal prejudices embedded in the reporting. Nevertheless, when a journalist from the Independent, a well-respected UK broadsheet, asked to interview us, we were tentatively hoping for an exchange that might seriously and fairly address the why and how of Celebrity Studies. Matthew Bell then published his article entitled ‘Celebrity, the cerebral and articles you won't see in heat’, and while erroneously referring to the journal as a ‘magazine’, he advised his readers how there will be no ‘close-up pap snaps of Lindsay Lohan's tit tape here, or insider exclusives on the Big Brother house’. Rather, readers can expect essays on ‘the growth of the Jamie Oliver effect on political decision-making’ (Bell 2008). Bell goes on to quote from Germaine Greer, who suggests that she ‘doubts it will last more than three issues’ (although the journal has been presented to her as a ‘magazine’), and he concludes his piece by predicting how ‘we can expect plenty of pseudo-academic mumbo jumbo’ from the journal. What was it about Celebrity Studies that irked Matthew so much? What was it about the journal that attracted the attention and derision of shock-jocks in Sydney and Daily Tribune Reporters in Tennessee? Many of the answers we might give actually lie at the heart of why and how Celebrity is key to the way the social world organises and commodifies its representations, discourses and ideologies, sensations, impressions and fantasies. In the media's bludgeoning of the idea for the journal, we knew that the critical worth of Celebrity Studies was being proven. We understood that the very notion of a scholarly celebrity journal and of academics studying the impact of celebrity culture on everyday life was touching a raw nerve at the symbolic centre of celebrity production.

On one level, Bell's response can be positioned as part of a wider discourse of concern on an apparent drift toward cultural relativism and the supposed ‘dumbing down’ of academia. But it is important to note here that the subject of celebrity, in the British context at least, has been especially visible in these wider debates – presented as one of the most potent forms of evidence of the declining worth of a degree qualification. Although sometimes appearing with an eclectic range of other subjects such as ‘surfing, beauty therapy, knitwear, circus skills, pig enterprise management, death studies, air guitar … and wine studies’ (Clark 2007), the reference to ‘David Beckham studies’ or ‘academic courses on subjects such as the life of David Beckham’ (University World News, 2009) has become a recurring sight in the last decade. In this regard, it would seem that the study of celebrity gives legitimacy to a ‘faux’, low-brow area of derisible scholarship, takes students away from the more ‘serious’ or ‘worthy’ academic disciplines, and consequently lowers cultural and aesthetic standards. The first dedicated journal to the critical exploration of celebrities would surely illustrate, then, how ‘frivolous’ and populist academia had become.

The title of the Independent article appeared to distinguish the journal from a popular celebrity magazine such as heat, although it was as much about differentiating its own status from such populist fare. Magazines such as heat, Now or Reveal, and tabloid newspapers such as the Sun or the Star, had little interest in jousting with the concept of this journal – and Bell positions such publications as unflinchingly immersed within celebrity culture. Although, to be fair to the (actually highly knowing and witty) discourse of heat magazine, it is not unknown for the publication to comment on celebrity while remaining utterly inside it – combining a deeply ironic gaze on the landscape of ‘celebville’ with a fervent hunger for its everyday detail. As Boyd Hilton, the magazine's TV Editor aptly describes elsewhere: ‘[P]ossibly the only thing … more ubiquitous than celebrities are people complaining about them’ (2004, p. 21). If we return to the Bell article this suggests perhaps that, in a culture in which celebrity has become so ubiquitous, it is no longer a question of staking a claim to cultural distinction and legitimacy through proud ignorance (‘Did you see any of those “celebrities” as you call them?’) (Marshall, 1997, p. 5) than it is about taking up a dismissive position on their pervasive place within our everyday landscape. It would also be misleading to position this ‘popular’ debate as entirely separate from academic discourse, as it brings to mind an example of academic scholarship which takes up a similar position. Philosopher Mark Rowlands' recent book on Fame suggests that the academic and cultural obsession with celebrity is akin to mental illness: ‘new variant fame’ or ‘vfame’, is a state in which ‘we are constitutionally incapable of distinguishing quality from bullshit’ (2008, p. 91). For Rowlands, celebrity obsession creates a modern condition where high and low cultural forms are not simply indistinguishable but reversed, so that, for example, low-brow, mediocre Britney Spears is considered to be more important than the visionary Beethoven.

One can situate the rejection of Celebrity Studies in relation to the media's own common sense-based rationale for its celebrity output. The oft-repeated caught off-guard close-ups of the troubled, dishevelled or misbehaving celebrity sell newspapers and magazines. Air-time filled with the range of celebrity shows, segues and commentary clearly chase ratings and secure advertising revenue. For the journalist, editor, broadcaster, advertising executive, then, there isn't anything about celebrity that needs academic investigation; it is simply a matter of market forces, of consumer or reader or listener or viewer demand. Photographs capturing ‘close-up pap snaps of Lindsay Lohan’ (Bell 2008) are just that. Furthermore, this demand for celebrities is easily readable as simply the general public (the masses) needing or wanting a heroic, fantasy, escapist or friendly figure with whom to identify or believe in, or to indulge vicariously in a diverting piece of ‘lurid’ gossip. What's to study, what's to understand?

P. David Marshall has similarly spoken of his experience of contributing to media debate on celebrity culture (on CNN), and he reflects upon his difficult ‘fit’ with a discourse which ‘found it comfortable to talk about celebrities but not really deal with their role in contemporary culture in a substantive way’ (2006, p. 2) (see also Turner on this subject in this issue). As Marshall notes, the interview in which he was involved ultimately pivoted on a logic of ‘classic surface without any depth’ (Marshall 2006) – thus precisely replicating the criticism of celebrity culture that such spaces of commentary appear to mount. This is certainly at odds with the project of celebrity studies, which arguably epitomises the continued importance of the aim to defamiliarise the everyday, and to make apparent the cultural politics and power relations which sit at the centre of the ‘taken for granted’ (which has long since structured the foundations of media, television and cultural studies). In this regard, the media in part took issue with Celebrity Studies (as it does with so-called ‘Mickey Mouse’ disciplines which are often media-focused), because it will seek to critically understand and to de-mythologise their role in the production of culture. In contrast, we think that it is fair to assume that the main readership for this journal will have little difficulty in accepting that this is not shallow but deep, not lacking and empty but ethically and politically purposeful.

Our understanding of the media's response to Celebrity Studies involves turning the pen and the lens back onto them – requiring a critical unmasking of their world-view. By drawing upon theoretical positions that recognise their centrality to meaning-making and idea formation in the modern world, we are able to read their response as coming out of their role as ‘a generative centre that explains the social world's functioning and its values’ (Couldry 2009). This ‘myth of the media centre’, as Nick Couldry posits it, understands that they function as ‘our privileged access-point to society's centre or core’ (Couldry 2009). In critiquing the journal, the mainstream media were providing the discursive framework through which ‘ordinary’ – or at least non-academic – people could first meet and understand it. This deflection (which undeniably operates on a more complex level than we are able to gesture to here) surely says much about the fact that celebrity lies at the core of this mythic media centre.

Indeed, and to make one final return to Bell's article, we might point to the notable inclusion of Germaine Greer's voice in his piece. Is the Australian-born writer, academic and journalist being drawn upon here for her ‘expertise’ in this field, or does her status as a well-known person, a celebrity no less, offer the article a visibility, cultural legibility and legitimacy beyond this? Furthermore, Greer's status as a commentator on celebrity culture was partly fostered by her own appearance on the UK Celebrity Big Brother in 2005, and while her decision to leave the competition early – before offering a damning critique of the ethics of the reality show (BBC 2005) – may assist in her positioning as a critical commentator on the ‘trivialities’ of celebrity, her initial selection for the format, and her apparent willingness to participate, provides clear evidence that neither Greer, nor Bell's article, lie outside the cultural and economic logic of celebrity culture.

The academic study of stars, celebrity and fame (delineations we deal with briefly below) has increasingly become an accepted part of the academy since the publication of Richard Dyer's foundational Stars (1979), and yet it is still a topic that remains contentious – seen as residing at the most populist end of the ‘popular’. This is not surprising when we consider that, despite the now clear centrality of celebrity to the media economy and the audiovisual landscape of everyday life, the idea of following celebrity can still be classed as a ‘guilty pleasure’ (Marshall 2006, p. 4). In the opening to his 1994 book, Claims to fame, Joshua Gamson reflects on how he become involved with the study of celebrity, asking the rhetorical question: ‘What were these people doing in my life? … I was a PhD candidate from an established family!’ (Gamson 1994, p. 4, cited in Turner 2004, p. 92).

The authors of this editorial also had cause to reflect upon their own positioning as academics engaged in the study of celebrity as well as celebrity consumers, albeit with different positions ultimately taken up here. At the end of media interviews enquiring about the ‘study’ of the phenomenon, it is not uncommon to be asked: ‘And one last thing – who is your favourite celebrity?’. It would not, perhaps, seem totally inappropriate – if potentially uncomfortable for some – for a scholar of film or television to be asked to name their favourite film or TV programme. But for Su, to be asked this question about a celebrity seemed to bring into sharper focus a more ‘difficult’ relationship between the positions of scholar/media consumer/fan – perhaps because the apparent cloak of intellectual ‘objectivity’ and expertise is implicitly regarded as more important in the study of such a populist sphere. Su remembers mumbling something about her longer-term ‘admiration’ for Madonna, before returning to a more ‘appropriate’ analytical stance when she explained how she had keenly followed the career of the British reality TV star Jade Goody, but only so that she could analyse her in her work. For Sean, the question of who is your ‘favourite celebrity’ is very often the right one to pose, since for him intimacy with the celebrity, the like and dislike of their persona and the subjective investment one can (should) carry into the scholarly arena produces richly rewarding, self-reflective awakenings. Sean's discussion (Redmond 2007), of his own investment in George Best is a case in point. (The extent to which the study of celebrity could become more self-reflexive about how its own critical discourse relates to judgements of value is also taken up by Bennett and Holmes in their essay in this issue on television fame.)

Defining celebrity and celebrity studies

Given the aim to encourage a breadth of work, it is not our intention here to set out a tight or prescriptive definition of the term ‘celebrity’ – although this would, in any case, be problematic, as the word is slippery and varied in its connotations. We respect the fact that film studies in particular has historically used the term ‘star’, and the concept of the star (deCordova 1990, Dyer 1979, Ellis 1982), was used in this context to refer to a representational interaction between the on/off-screen persona. In comparison, work outside film studies has more often used the term ‘celebrity’ to indicate a broad category which defines the contemporary state of being famous. Chris Rojek, for example, argues that, ‘celebrity = impact on public consciousness’ (2001, p. 10). Related to this, the term is also understood, both culturally and academically, to indicate a redefinition of the public/private boundary where the construction of the famous is concerned: where the primary emphasis is on the person's ‘private’ life rather than career, if indeed they are seen as having a ‘career’ at all (Geraghty 2000, Turner, 2004). According to Kotler, Rein and Stoller, ‘a celebrity is a name which once made by the news, now makes news by itself’ (1997, p. 14). This, of course, also swiftly illustrates how the term celebrity, yoked as it is to judgements surrounding ‘work’, ‘talent’ and worth, can immediately bring into play pejorative connotations. But what generally unites the work on stardom and celebrity is the agreement that celebrity or fame does not reside in the individual: it is constituted discursively, ‘by the way in which the individual is represented’ (Turner et al. 2000, p. 11), although this question of representation is of course a vexing one.

In the contemporary context, this raises an interesting question for the field (which is pursued further by Bennett and Holmes in this issue): the extent to which one continues to delineate distinctions between different media forms where the construction of fame is concerned. For example, and to re-invoke the stardom/celebrity distinction above, the greater permeability between media spheres has undermined the apparent ‘exclusivity’ of film stardom (Barker 2003, p. 11, Geraghty 2000), thus raising questions about the methodological and critical tools used to analyse film stars, especially in revising previous approaches to this sphere (see below). At another level, however, there is the suggestion that while celebrity is profoundly multi-media and multi-textual – with celebrity magazines perhaps offering the most permeable space for the blurring of different names and personae into a mélange of ‘celebrity culture’ – media distinctions still remain (Turner 2004). The film, sports or rock star have primary texts or performance arenas through which to be identified and promoted.

Yet that is not to suggest that the porous and interconnected nature of media forms is only of prime concern to more contemporary studies of celebrity: such a context can prompt historical work to return to the past in order to take a more expansive media, and often disciplinary approach – such as Tom Moles' recent edited collection on Romanticism and celebrity culture 1750–1850 (2008), which moves across theatre, music, literature, visual culture, fashion and boxing. As historical work continues to emerge (Holmes 2008, Murray 2005, Ponce de Leon 2002, Turnock 2007), there is the possibility for an increasingly dynamic dialogue about the origins of ‘modern’ celebrity, interpretations of the history of fame and the interplay between past and present. In a similar way, the interplay or complex articulations between the national specificity of a celebrity, their global reach and the local or ‘glocal’ way in which they are made sense of, is intended of paramount importance to Celebrity Studies. The work by Pramod K. Nayer (2009), Diane Negra (2001) and Ginette Vincendeau (2000) are important markers in this respect.

This journal is a product of the development of celebrity studies, while it also seeks to become a key space in which this intellectual terrain can further grow and flourish. Academic work on celebrity has expanded in recent years on a considerable scale (and Turner discusses this trajectory in more detail in this issue). There is now a range of chapters, books and readers which offer interpretations of this development (Austin and Barker 2003, Holmes and Redmond 2006, Marshall 2006, Redmond and Holmes 2007, Turner 2004), but few would dispute the crucial status of Richard Dyer's canonical works Stars (1979) and Heavenly bodies: film stars and society (1986). Working from within film studies (but certainly drawing upon intellectual tools and paradigms from media and cultural studies), Dyer famously drew attention to the analysis of stars in the realm of representation and ideology: stars were semiotic signs that could be ‘read’ and deconstructed. Dyer focused attention upon the wider ideological and political function of stardom as a phenomenon, foregrounding how stars articulate highly visible discourses on personhood – and within a capitalist society, individuality – at any one time. But one of the key influences of his work was to foster sophisticated conceptual tools for reading the star ‘image’ (Dyer 1986). Although film studies went on to produce work on the history of (largely Hollywood) film stardom, as well as work on questions of performance, industry and audiences (Barker 2003, p. 11), the most significant expansion since this time has occurred in media sociology, media, television and cultural studies (and we should also note work emerging in a more sporadic form in psychology, journalism, law, fine art, art criticism, literature studies and sports studies).

As Barker outlines, such work ‘frequently ask[s] broader questions, and deploy[s] a wider range of theoretical approaches’ (Barker 2003, p. 13). According to Marshall in the introduction to The celebrity culture reader:

From an industrial as well as cultural vantage point, celebrities are integral for understanding the contemporary moment. As phenomena, celebrities intersect with a remarkable array of political, cultural and economic activities to a threshold point that it is worth identifying the operation of a celebrity culture embedded in national and transnational cultures. (original emphasis, 2006, p. 6)

As this makes clear, while the work in what we might call ‘celebrity studies’ ranges across such topics as the relationship between celebrity and the construction of the self and identity under consumer capitalism (Biressi and Nunn 2005, Marshall 1997), the gender politics of contemporary celebrity (Negra and Holmes 2008), the celebrity industry (Gamson 1994, Turner, 2004), celebrity and media history (Murray 2005), celebrity and religion (Redmond 2008, Rojek 2001), the interconnections between celebrity, politics and citizenship (Corner and Pels 2003), celebrity and discourses of law and regulation (Gies 2009), or the cultural and political economy of sporting celebrity (Andrews and Jackson 2001, Whannel 2001), there runs throughout this scholarship the common assumption that we are now in the business of analysing a culture of celebrity.

While this (very brief) list takes in a range of approaches, media forms and historical junctures, the emphasis on celebrity as a key trope in articulating discourses on the self and identity often provides a common focus of concern (Marshall 2006, p. 3). After all, and as discussed in relation to Couldry's (2000) work above, few would now challenge the idea that celebrities have a special or privileged place in the media world; they reverberate at its centre and suggest (in a multitude of often contradictory ways), that if one attains celebrity status, one will have symbolic access to the pulsating heart of modern life and the power lines that operate there. As Leo Braudy suggests in his historical study of fame, even a ‘minor’ moment of media exposure ‘promises acceptability, even if one commits the most heinous crime, because thereby people will finally know who you are, and you will be saved from the living death of being unknown’ (1986, p. 562). Indeed, the idea that ‘ordinary’ people – especially the young – are now using the possibility of attaining fame as a means to know that they ‘really exist’ is but one of a number of media sound-bites which requires greater interrogation and analysis.

‘Celebrity studies’, then, might be described less as a distinct discipline than the product of an expanded and expanding intellectual interest in celebrity which, while it might currently find its most energetic hub in media and cultural studies, operates at the intersection of work emerging from a range of disciplines and approaches. Yet there is still, as Turner candidly explores in this issue, much work to be done when it comes to expanding and strengthening the possibilities and fruits of the field. Turner rightly observes that, largely because of its strong relationship with media and cultural studies, the majority of visible work has approached celebrity at a representational and/or discursive level, and we can also note that the dialogue between different disciplines here has not been especially fulsome. (For example, media and cultural studies has not engaged in a great deal of interaction with journalism where the study of celebrity is concerned – despite this offering a fairly obvious and productive area of common concern.) Turner goes on to suggest that key areas which beckon further research are the myriad of economic networks which make up the celebrity industry; the economic and cultural contours of the celebrity-as-commodity; celebrity in a global context; and the relationship between celebrity and its audience(s). Indeed, and when compared to representational and discursive studies, work on the reception of celebrity, especially at an empirical level, is notably sparse, with exceptions provided by Stacey (1994), Gamson (1994) and Couldry and Markham (2007). There are also wider questions at stake here which require us to think, as the reference to ‘ordinary’ people and fame above suggests, about the role of celebrity culture in identity formation, rather than focusing primarily upon the reception of a celebrity or group of celebrities per se. ¹ There is important work yet to be done on the phenomenology of celebrity, and their sensorial, sense-based address to those fans who experience them as fleshed or embodied living things.

A journal in celebrity studies

Of course, the possibilities for the future expansion of the field can be embraced as a horizon of lively potential, and this is undoubtedly an exciting time for celebrity studies. It is in this context that we seek to place the journal of Celebrity Studies. In this regard, we would suggest that a journal is particularly well placed to offer a dynamic meeting place for interdisciplinary exchange, while it can also follow – with more flexibility than a book – the shifts, changes and rhythms which structure celebrity culture itself. In this respect, Celebrity Studies will be a journal that focuses upon the critical exploration of celebrity; it will seek to make sense of celebrity by drawing upon a range of (inter)disciplinary approaches, media forms, historical periods and national contexts; and it will address key issues in the production, circulation and consumption of celebrity from both historical and more contemporary lenses. In so doing, it will also seek to be a key site for academic debate about the enterprise of celebrity studies itself.

Scholars have increasingly visited the sites of the celebrity to prove that they have a profound effect on knowledge, power and representation. This centrality is also bolstered by the fact that celebrity is a subject which cuts across disciplinary and media borders –and the potential for exchange, fusion and debate here is considerable. Celebrity is recognised to be a global, international, yet also often culturally ‘local’ phenomenon which produces modes of representation that can be felt as empowering, disingenuous and impossible to attain. Celebrities can be studied in terms of the political economy of fame, at the level of discursive circulation and in terms of their significance for media ‘users’, audiences and viewers. In short, celebrity exists at the core of many of the spaces, experiences and economies of modern life, and a journal dedicated to exploring its elusive, contradictory and always complex meanings has much to offer. The need for a journal such as Celebrity Studies becomes clear when we situate it within the context of wider work in the field. Despite the fact that celebrity represents one of the fastest-growing areas of scholarship in media and cultural studies in particular, there is no primary publication dedicated to understanding and interrogating its significance. If we were to charge this journal with a celebrity manifesto of sorts it will:

• cut across media, geographical and historical boundaries to account for the ideological and political shifts in the construction of fame, and the specific inflections of media forms and national contexts;

• bring together interventions and approaches examining different representations and instances of fame, and from different disciplines;

• recognise the centrality of celebrities to questions about knowledge, power and representation, and how these have been transformed by celebrity culture;

• situate the study of celebrities in new sites of analysis – sites that explore fame in terms of new technologies and digital interfaces, corporeality and damage (to individual stars and celebrities, and to ‘culture’ more widely);

• explore the political economy of fame; and

• provide a dynamic scholarly research space for the on-going and culturally relevant examination of stars, celebrities and ‘fame’, in all its manifestations.

Alongside the primary research articles, the journal will include a ‘forum’ section (edited by James Bennett) devoted to shorter observations, debates or issues in celebrity culture that need or demand ‘quick’-time analysis and assessment. There will also be a yearly Special Edition, with a guest editor, on a dominant or prevailing theme that warrants multi-perspectival approaches. The first special edition, scheduled for March 2011 and guest edited by Deborah Jermyn, will look at female celebrity and ageing. There is also a planned Special Edition on celebrity and the global, edited by Jo Littler, and an edition devoted to celebrity and the London Olympics in 2012.

First issue: read all about it

In this first, invitation-only, edition, we have solicited a number of key writers to assess the what, why, how and where of celebrity culture today. This is not to say that the historical lines that enable us to coherently map the today of fame won't be attended to. Celebrity history now is one of the themes of this edition, and we have selected topics in which the authors reflect self-consciously on celebrity studies itself (e.g. Turner, Bennett and Holmes, Marshall, Redmond) and/or ways of approaching the political and cultural significance of fame today. The articles are theoretical, conceptual and methodologically driven, and also shaped by contemporary case study approaches. We have organised them to complement and contest one another: the inaugural edition, then, will immediately place the dynamic, conflicting and interdisciplinary nature of the field into open play. It is an exciting edition, full of rich and provocative thinking and textured argument. This is a journal in Celebrity Studies.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Katherine Burton, Shelley Allen and Greig Barclay for their tremendous support of the project. Sorry about the Matthew Bell interview (although it turned out to be ‘productive’ for the article in the end). To those on the editorial board, and who have read and written insightful reports, you help us to navigate the celebrity path, and impart wise counsel. To James Bennett for being an outstanding Forum editor; and to Stephen Harper for his wonderful stewardship of the reviews section. Thanks to Allison Maplseden for spending the New Zealand summer with us poring over articles and peer review tables. And thanks to our students for celebrity twittering, blogging, reading trashy celeb magazines and for thinking and writing about celebrity in exciting and insightful ways.

Su: No comment!

Sean: to Tom Cruise for Legend, Top Gun, Eyes Wide Shut, the ‘I am love’ Oprah interview and Tropic Thunder.

Notes

1. We can reference here the example of Kimberley Allen's research (Allen 2010, forthcoming) into the relationship between young women's (16–19 years) conception of female celebrities and their own negotiation of aspirations surrounding ‘work’, talent and achievement.