P. David Marshall ‘NEW MEDIA - NEW SELF’ ‘’The changing power of
celebrity’’
celebrity, in its focus on the extra-textual dimensions of the public persona, has
always had elements that were out of control of an industry, an apparatus or a
system of production.
there had developed by the 1980s
a maturity in the structure of a celebrity system of promotion: what could described
as a "modern" celebrity in the context of television, film and popular music had
emerged: a coherent system of promotion of celebrities was in place that was
supported by the industries of print and entertainment television.
Audiences were organized carefully and discretely around an array of celebrities and
closely connected to cultural commodities. Celebrities themselves were also highly
organized as commodities even when they exited the world of cultural commodities
and only existed in the tabloid press.
The symbiotic relationship between media and celebrity has been ruptured
somewhat in the last decade through the development of new media. The discrete
and carefully controlled and distributed structure of the culture industries, where
cultural commodities and their promotional extensions are a tightly interwoven
tapestry, have been elasticized by the different flows of information that have
developed via the Internet and the Web as well as new media forms such as mobile
phones, iPods etc
- celebrity is a "source of the self'
Individuality is one of the ideological mainstays of consumer capitalism where,
through consumption, we as individuals can have the serial frisson of transformation
and change and the sensation of choice and possibility even when we do not act on
that possibility. (ощущение права выбора).
Celebrity and the celebrity culture it spawns can be thought of as one of these
discourses of the self that makes indiViduality concrete and real. It moves the
representation of individuality outside of the film, television, sport, politics, or
popular music text into what I would call the extraordinary everyday as it maps and
explains celebrated individuals' activities.
Key concerns:
- First, celebrity culture as a discourse is a focus on individualism and identity.
- Second, it is also a discourse of identification or implied identification by an
audience (the celebrity's power is its capacity to embody an audience and more
specifically the "affective investment" of an audience)
- Third, celebrity is a discourse of becoming and transformation: celebrities' origins
are from the populace, their fame is not necessarily derived from prior social status,
and their current status is achieved in a lifetime
The extratextual dimensions (eg: television talk shows, the celebrity interview which
has populated television
production, magazine cover stories and newspaper sections) of stars that work to
transform them into celebrities have developed subgenres and categories as well as
extensions of a celebrity system further into the arts, politics, sciences, medicine,
business, and the academy. The celebrity system is in some sense ubiquitous.
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, in many ways, the celebrity system was part of the feedback system for industries
such as the film industry to gauge value, impact, and investment in their films. This
idea of investment by an audience takes on a more critical dimension in the era of
new media precisely because investment and engagement in cultural forms is what
new media is altering through an intensification of the cultural experience.
Differences in subjectivity: audience subject and celebrity power
- Film "sutured" a relation between the stars presented and the audience in a
powerful form of identification where the audience pleasure is imagining him or
herself as the active agent/ character on screen.
- Television's form of identification has rarely been analyzed as having the same
capacity to transform the viewer into a dream-state and substitute ego-ideals in that
condition of watching. Television's usual point of consumption has meant that its
images have been integrated somewhat into the everyday and the domestic flow of
life.
I have described this kind of identification as a form of familiar connection with
the audience in contrast to the aura of identification that film is often able to
produce as an apparatus.
- Popular music has generally relied on a form of identification that makes the star
one of the audience. The experience of popular music is one of close relationship to
the artist via the concert as the ultimate moment of authentic connection
Collectively, traditional media have produced "audience-subjectivities" that imply
the engagement of the audience with particular celebrated personas. The key
collective subjectivity developed here is through the category of the audience. Via
that category of the audience, the production of our celebrity culture can be
characterized as one modalized through an elaborate system of representation.
Celebrities in a sense "represent" audiences in various public worlds. In terms of the
industry itself, celebrities embody the power of the audience members: the
audience's power - their economic clout - is represented by the celebrity and their
capacity to deliver that audience for the industry.
Representation, through an elaborate network of public figures, describes the
operation and the continued presence and power of our celebrity system and
possibly how it has migrated so easily into other realms beyond entertainment.
Supporting this organization of representation have been media systems, whether
television, radio, print, or film which in their technology are designed to ''broadcast''
from one to many. In this way, the systemic qualities of the media industry help
reinforce the capacity for representation to operate efficiently. The media help focus
audiences on particular personae that represent them culturally, politically, and
socially.
New media subjectivities: the rise of presentation
New media forms help produce a very different subjectivity that advances a
presentational regime.
1) The Internet would be difficult to define as a single media form, but it perhaps
best embodies the way that a new media subjectivity has emerged. Through
sending packets of information in both directions - that is, uploading and
downloading from any individual computer - the Internet does not resemble the
broadcast model of communication. It permits movement of information in both
