Reality television and the hypertrophic celebrity in Victoria Beckham: Coming to America

Abstract

Tom Mole argues that contemporary celebrity culture has undergone a ‘hypertrophic’ shift marked by the public's increasing fascination with the mechanics of celebrity production over individual celebrities themselves. This article examines reality television, more specifically what I call ‘celebrity-sanctioned reality television’, as a symptom of this broader shift. Both reality television and hypertrophic celebrity culture rely on the privileged access to the ‘real’ self while simultaneously offering heightened awareness of the processes of constructing that ‘real’, making the television genre an ideal vehicle for the promotion of the hypertrophic celebrity. The 2007 reality special, Victoria Beckham: Coming to America, is analysed as a celebrity-sanctioned use of reality television that explicitly aims to deconstruct the celebrity façade in a bid to re-articulate Victoria Beckham's celebrity image within the American celebrity system. The programme playfully and ironically weds the textual characteristics of reality television to hypertrophic celebrity culture in order to maintain control over the public presentation of the celebrity image – even as it purports to disrupt and expose it. The article concludes with a brief discussion of audience readings of the programme in order to discuss further the viability of the hypertrophic project as a means to construct and maintain attributed celebrity status.

Keywords:

• celebrity audiences
• Coming to America
• hypertrophic celebrity
• media production
• reality television
• Victoria Beckham

Notes

1. Alhough the programme was subsequently broadcast in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, it was produced originally for NBC and American television audiences. Thus, I restrict my analysis to the initial American broadcast of the programme.

2. At the time of filming and broadcast of Coming to America, the group had not yet announced plans to reunite for a greatest hits album and a world tour (Dinh and Murphy 2008).

3. Fuller 2007.

4. Fuller 2007.

5. When Coming to America was broadcast on British television on 17 July 2007, a disclaimer stating that ‘some scenes have been staged for dramatic effect’ and that the ‘role of the assistant is played by an actress’ appeared at the bottom of the screen. However, this disclaimer was not included in the original American broadcast and there was no indication for American audiences that Renee Gauthier was hired to play Victoria's personal assistant. She is simply listed in the credits of the American broadcast as one of two ‘assistants’ and while her IMDB.com page lists her as an actress and a stand-up comedian, her credit for the programme lists her as appearing as ‘Herself – Victoria's personal assistant’ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974957/).