The dissonant personas of a female celebrity: Amy and the public self of Amy Winehouse

ABSTRACT

Celebrities strategically perform their public selves in a culturally constrained context. A celebrity from a marginalised group may find that the persona they seek to construct is dissonant with prevailing social discourses and as a result their celebrity image becomes imbued with meanings contradictory to those they intend. This article uses the growing literature in persona studies to analyse and compare the public self created by the late British musician Amy Winehouse during her lifetime with the persona assembled posthumously by the filmmakers of the critically acclaimed documentary Amy. The article argues that while Winehouse presented herself in terms of excessive performativity, the film relies on the archetypal construct of the creative woman as a victim. In an act of public absolution the filmmakers seek to rescue Winehouse from her trainwreck tabloid image, but their cinematic depiction of a psychologically damaged feminine subject obscures the rebellious agency that was central to her self-presentation. The production and critical success of Amy is an exemplary case study of a wider cultural pattern in which the subversive persona created by a transgressive celebrity is displaced by a conventional persona that is produced by influential intermediaries and functions to reproduce dominant social discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• Amy Winehouse
• Amy
• celebrity persona
• female celebrity
• documentary

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The tagline of the film.

2. Kapadia generalises about the public’s cruel attitude towards Winehouse, but qualitative research by Harvey et al. (2015) suggests a degree of sympathy towards her despite her ‘trainwreck’ persona in some British media.

3. The only footage created for the film is a series of establishing shots taken around London and New York.

4. Kapadia states that he interviewed more than 100 people, many of whom had never spoken to media before (Film 4 2015). He describes how the interview process functioned for some as a form of ‘therapy’ (Film 4 2015), a claim that implies the truth of his interviewees’ revelations due to their status as confessions (Redmond 2011, p. 2).

5. Following Holmes and Redmond (2006, p. 10), I will treat the terms ‘star’ and ‘celebrity’ as having a ‘degree of liquidity’ and as such I will draw on the relevant scholarship related to both concepts in my discussion.

6. Another aspect of Winehouse’s identity – her Jewish heritage – is acknowledged but not foregrounded in her celebrity persona, both within the film and in Winehouse’s own self-presentation; therefore it is not discussed in this article. Stratton (2009) analyses the role of Winehouse’s Jewishness to her celebrity image.

7. Ryan (2005) uses this phrase in relation to Bessie Smith, one of the inaugurators of a tradition of actively excessive female musicians.

8. Kapadia includes footage of Winehouse singing Rehab on Later … with Jools Holland (3 November 2006), then on American television as she rises to fame and finally in a drunken performance at Bestival 2008. The word ‘disappear’ is quoted from an interview with Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) (Amy 2015).

9. Winehouse (2012, p. 41) provides an example of how Winehouse innovatively reinterpreted her biography through her lyrics.

10. Kapadia repeatedly uses this term to describe the tabloid persona of Winehouse (for example, Felsenthal 2015, Wheeler 2015).

11. Although briefly addressed in the documentary, the under-emphasis on Winehouse’s eating disorder (compared with her drug and alcohol use) highlights a deeply embedded contradiction within the ideology of celebrity culture (Dyer 2006, p. 153) that although female celebrities are expected to be extremely slim and angular, their (actual) means for achieving this figure (as opposed to those publicly discussed) remain invisible. Moreover, while ‘thin-ness is read as a signifier of both impulse control and sanity’ (Weber 2012, p. 346), excessive thin-ness signifies a lack of control. Winehouse’s audiences admired her diminutive frame as an aspect of her overall Back to Black ‘look’, but the illness evidenced by her emaciation remained largely unacknowledged during her career.

12. Much of this footage is taken from Shymansky’s personal archive.

13. Additional evidence of Winehouse’s growing maturity includes her withdrawal from media visibility (perhaps the ultimate act of defiance in a culture of celebrity), her charity work, such as taking part in a breast cancer awareness photo-shoot for Easy Living Magazine in April 2008, and her promotion of other musicians, notably her back-up singer Zalon Thompson and her protégé Dionne Bromfield.

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Bronwyn Polaschek

Bronwyn Polaschek wrote this article while working as a Teaching Fellow in the School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She researches popular culture, gender and film and is author of The Postfeminist Biopic: Narrating the Lives of Plath, Kahlo, Woolf and Austen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).