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A star-making factory without rival, the Japanese talent agency Johnny's Jimusho has brought fame to several generations of male stars – singers, actors and performers. Beyond the Male Idol Factory asks what the phenomenon of “Johnny's Idols” reveals about discourses of masculinity and national identity in contemporary Japan. Examining the pervasive presence of these stars across a wide range of Japanese media, the book explores how Johnny's Idols act as role models of ideal masculinity and good citizenship as well as entertainers. Taking a wide-ranging cultural studies approach, the book assesses the social, economic and demographic contexts of these familiar stars in post-industrial and post-Bubble Japanese society.

Feuds within fashion houses, megalomaniacs and photoshoot nightmares – fashion and drama have been a perfect match for decades. Over the past ten years, we have witnessed a boom of documentaries about fashion magazine editors, fashion and media politics and the history of fashion houses.How and why did fashion documentaries and non-fiction media become so popular? Documenting Fashion explores and reassesses the role of documentary media by tracing its history in shaping our understanding of fashion across multiple platforms and different national contexts, including industrial films, newsreels, TV shows, documentary films, digital media and photography. The essays in this collection underpin and profile a scholarly space in which a dialogue between fashion and documentary studies can evolve by drawing from different methodologies and approaches, such as media and cultural studies, ethnography, archival and museum studies, gender studies, marketing and public relations.

Biopics and other movies and television shows based on real events are increasingly appearing at the multiplex and on streaming platforms alongside blockbuster franchises and adaptations. The appeal of movies and television shows based on true stories is that they claim to tell us what really happened, with the public and private versions of events packaged into one coherent narrative. But how do they do it, and what makes this version of events so appealing? The Biopic and Beyond investigates the process that turns the distant public figures that populate news and entertainment into screen characters that we can engage with and try to understand a little better. Even though they aren't the real thing, our engagement with fictionalized versions of public figures can, for better or worse, color the way we understand the real person behind them. Screen engagement with the fake person behind the real person doesn't only happen in biopics and docudramas, with media as varied as sketch comedy, fan fiction and the celebrity cameo contributing to the ways we understand public figures. Using case studies such as Mark Zuckerberg and The Social Network, Sarah Palin and Saturday Night Live, and Louis C.K. and Louie, The Biopic and Beyond will make you think about the way you see the world through a fictionalized version of it.

This book looks back to the early days of new and social media, to examine the potential threat that such technologies and platforms posed to the mainstream corporate media's gatekeeping, and its ability to exploit, humiliate, and even violate famous women.Drawing on her own experiences working as part of this gatekeeping system, Stephanie Patrick argues that, in order to combat this threat, the mainstream media doubled down on gendered narratives of meritocracy that legitimized certain (male) celebrities over others. Using a range of case studies spanning'old'media sites and'new,'including Disney, Playboy, and reality television, this book demonstrates that sexual exploitation and violation could be considered constitutive of female celebrity, rather than a side effect. Patrick's case studies include some of America's most (in)famous celebrities, including Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton, and Donald Trump, urging readers to question their assumptions about these figures and their public trajectories.This nuanced exploration of patriarchal capitalism and women's ongoing sexual exploitation by the media will be an important reference for scholars and students of digital and new media, journalism, celebrity studies, and gender studies.

Indigenous Celebrity speaks to the possibilities, challenges, and consequences of popular forms of recognition, critically recasting the lens through which we understand Indigenous people's entanglements with celebrity. It presents a wide range of essays that explore the theoretical, material, social, cultural, and political impacts of celebrity on and for Indigenous people. It questions and critiques the whitestream concept of celebrity and the very juxtaposition of “Indigenous” and “celebrity” and casts a critical lens on celebrity culture's impact on Indigenous people. Indigenous people who willingly engage with celebrity culture, or are drawn up into it, enter into a complex terrain of social relations informed by layered dimensions of colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia/transphobia, and classism. Yet this reductive framing of celebrity does not account for the ways that Indigenous people's own worldviews inform Indigenous engagement with celebrity culture––or rather, popular social and cultural forms of recognition. Indigenous Celebrity reorients conversations on Indigenous celebrity towards understanding how Indigenous people draw from nation-specific processes of respect and recognition while at the same time navigating external assumptions and expectations. This collection examines the relationship of Indigenous people to the concept of celebrity in past, present, and ongoing contexts, identifying commonalities, tensions, and possibilities.

In the last 50 years, the social importance of stars has steadily grown, to the point that stars have now become key role models who strongly influence people's behaviours. This book considers the connections between the three main media (cinema, television and the web) and each of the three phases into which the history of stardom can be divided. The first phase can largely be credited with the creation and codification of contemporary stardom, while the second is linked to the spread of television, which weakened the Hollywood stardom model and gradually transformed the figure of the star, making it more intimate and familiar. In the last of these phases, we have many ‘outsiders'(personalities from a variety of professional domains and experiences) who are able to achieve considerable social visibility thanks to their skilful use of the web.

In this timely analysis of the economics of access that surround contemporary female celebrity, Hannah Yelin reveals a culture that requires women to be constantly ‘baring all'in physical exposure and psychic confessions. As famous women tell their story, in their ‘own words', constellations of ghostwriters, intermediaries and market forces undermine assertions of authorship and access to the ‘real'woman behind the public image. Yelin's account of the presence of the ghostwriter offers a fascinating microcosm of the wider celebrity machine, with insights pertinent to all celebrity mediation. Yelin surveys life-writing genres including fiction, photo-diary, comic-strip, and art anthology, as well as more ‘traditional'autobiographical forms; covering a wide range of media platforms and celebrity contexts including reality TV, YouTube, pop stardom, and porn/glamour modelling. Despite this diversity, Yelin reveals seemingly inescapable conventions, as well as spaces for resistance.Celebrity Memoir: from Ghostwriting to Gender Politics offers new insights on the curtailment of women's voices, with ramifications for literary studies of memoir, feminist media studies, celebrity studies, and work on the politics of production in the creative industries.

In Manufacturing Celebrity Vanessa Díaz traces the complex power dynamics of the reporting and paparazzi work that fuel contemporary Hollywood and American celebrity culture. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, her experience reporting for People magazine, and dozens of interviews with photographers, journalists, publicists, magazine editors, and celebrities, Díaz examines the racialized and gendered labor involved in manufacturing and selling relatable celebrity personas. Celebrity reporters, most of whom are white women, are expected to leverage their sexuality to generate coverage, which makes them vulnerable to sexual exploitation and assault. Meanwhile, the predominantly male Latino paparazzi can face life-threatening situations and endure vilification that echoes anti-immigrant rhetoric. In pointing out the precarity of those who hustle to make a living by generating the bulk of celebrity media, Díaz highlights the profound inequities of the systems that provide consumers with 24/7 coverage of their favorite stars.

Brazil markets itself as a racially mixed utopia. The United States prefers the term melting pot. Both nations have long used the image of the mulatta to push skewed cultural narratives. Highlighting the prevalence of mixed race women of African and European descent, the two countries claim to have perfected racial representation—all the while ignoring the racialization, hypersexualization, and white supremacy that the mulatta narrative creates. Jasmine Mitchell investigates the development and exploitation of the mulatta figure in Brazilian and U.S. popular culture. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, she analyzes policy debates and reveals the use of mixed-Black female celebrities as subjects of racial and gendered discussions. Mitchell also unveils the ways the media moralizes about the mulatta figure and uses her as an example of an ”acceptable” version of blackness that at once dreams of erasing undesirable blackness while maintaining the qualities that serve as outlets for interracial desire.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In the post–World War I American climate of isolationism, nativism, democratic expansion of civic rights, and consumerism, Italian-born star Rodolfo Valentino and Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini became surprising paragons of authoritarian male power and mass appeal. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States and Italy, Giorgio Bertellini's work shows how their popularity, both political and erotic, largely depended on the efforts of public opinion managers, including publicists, journalists, and even ambassadors. Beyond the democratic celebrations of the Jazz Age, the promotion of their charismatic masculinity through spectacle and press coverage inaugurated the now-familiar convergence of popular celebrity and political authority. This is the first volume in the new Cinema Cultures in Contact series, coedited by Giorgio Bertellini, Richard Abel, and Matthew Solomon. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org.

In this book, Lorraine York examines the figure of the celebrity who expresses discomfort with his or her intense condition of social visibility. Bringing together the fields of celebrity studies and what Ann Cvetkovich has called the “affective turn in cultural studies”, York studies the mixed affect of reluctance, as it is performed by public figures in the entertainment industries. Setting aside the question of whether these performances are offered “in good faith” or not, York theorizes reluctance as the affective meeting ground of seemingly opposite emotions: disinclination and inclination. The figures under study in this book are John Cusack, Robert De Niro, and Daniel Craig—three white, straight, cis-gendered-male cinematic stars who have persistently and publicly expressed a feeling of reluctance about their celebrity. York examines how the performance of reluctance, which is generally admired in celebrities, builds up cultural prestige that can then be turned to other purposes.

In recent years, celebrity philanthropy and activism has attracted much attention from the media, sparking a great deal of public interest. As exponents and endorsers of the marketisation and corporatisation of philanthropy and activism, globally renowned super-celebrities habitually lend their name, time and energy to a range of causes. They help raise awareness, generate funds and endeavour to evoke social and political responses to crucial societal issues. These can range from domestic violence, cancer prevention, climate change and transgender acceptance, to refugee problems and fighting poverty at home and abroad. But in what ways do (mediated communications about) these celebrities have the power to define what is going wrong in the world, who or what is to blame, how this can be solved and how this is to be evaluated morally and ethically? Does celebrity humanitarianism and activism serve to reinforce postcolonial power relations or does it help solve social problems, advancing traditional views on how society is, and should be, organised? Importantly, more than conceptual and empirical exploration of celebrity philanthropy and activism as such, this book analyses the mediated communication, the mediatised narratives that these endeavours provide.Combining insights from philanthropy and welfare regime studies, international politics and diplomacy, postcolonial studies, but also from marketing, from celebrity, star and fan studies, and from media, communication and cultural studies, this book critically analyses the mediated discourses and debates that celebrity philanthropy and activism provokes, and considers wider ethical and theoretical perspectives. It will be of interest to all scholars and students working in sociology, health and social care and social policy.

The face of internet celebrity is rapidly diversifying and evolving. Online and mainstream celebrity culture are now weaving together, such that breakout stars from one-hit viral videos are able to turn their transient fame into a full-time career. This book presents a framework for thinking about the different forms of internet celebrity that have emerged over the last decade, taking examples from the Global North and South, to consolidate key ideas about cultures of online fame. It discusses the overall landscape, developments and trends in the internet celebrity economy, and cross-cultural lessons.

Celebrity culture today teems with stars who challenge long-held ideas about a “normal” body. Plus-size and older actresses are rebelling against the cultural obsession with slender bodies and youth. Physically disabled actors and actresses are moving beyond the stock roles and stereotypes that once constrained their opportunities. Stars of various races and ethnicities are crafting new narratives about cultural belonging, while transgender performers are challenging our culture's assumptions about gender and identity. But do these new players in contemporary entertainment media truly signal a new acceptance of body diversity in popular culture? Focusing on six key examples—Melissa McCarthy, Gabourey Sidibe, Peter Dinklage, Danny Trejo, Betty White, and Laverne Cox—Rebellious Bodies examines the new body politics of stardom, situating each star against a prominent cultural anxiety about bodies and inclusion, evoking issues ranging from the obesity epidemic and the rise of postracial rhetoric to disability rights, Latino/a immigration, an aging population, and transgender activism. Using a wide variety of sources featuring these celebrities—films, TV shows, entertainment journalism, and more—to analyze each one's media persona, Russell Meeuf demonstrates that while these stars are promoted as examples of a supposedly more inclusive industry, the reality is far more complex. Revealing how their bodies have become sites for negotiating the still-contested boundaries of cultural citizenship, he uncovers the stark limitations of inclusion in a deeply unequal world.

Celebrity introduces the key terms and concepts, dilemmas and issues that are central to the study and critical understanding of celebrity. Drawing on two dynamic models from two different modes of enquiry – the circuit of celebrity culture and the circuit of celebrity affect – this book explores the multi-layered, multi-faceted contexts and concepts that sit within and surround the study of celebrity. Through building a critical story about celebrity, Sean Redmond discusses key topics such as identity and representation; the celebrity body; the consumption of celebrity and celebrity culture; and the sensory connection between fans and celebrities, gender, activism, gossip and toxicity. Including case studies on Miley Cyrus, David Bowie, Scarlett Johansson and Kate Winslet, Celebrity is a dynamic and topical volume ideal for students and academics in celebrity and cultural studies.

« Qui aurait pu prédire qu'un jour, bien que je vienne d'un milieu modeste et que mon enfance et mon adolescence aient été parsemées d'écueils, je figurerais parmi les personnalités les plus populaires et influentes de ma génération? Qui, dans la petite ville tranquille de banlieue où j'ai grandi, aurait pu croire qu'à vingt ans à peine je fréquenterais les lieux les plus branchés de Montréal et côtoierais des stars internationales? Que je deviendrais l'idole des jeunes filles et une femme désirée par les hommes? La vie nous réserve parfois de belles surprises… » Audacieuse? Provocante? Controversée? Derrière la Noémie Dufresne du web se cache pourtant une jeune femme sensible et déterminée. Au-delà des apparences, elle se livre ici sans détour sur les hauts et les bas de la célébrité dans le monde pas toujours tendre des réseaux sociaux. Victime d'intimidation à répétition, elle nous raconte comment elle a réussi à surmonter les obstacles qui se sont dressés devant elle et à se bâtir une renommée dans les domaines de l'événementiel, de la mode, de la photographie… Et ce n'est qu'un début!

Companion to Celebrity presents a multi-disciplinary collection of original essays that explore myriad issues relating to the origins, evolution, and current trends in the field of celebrity studies. Offers a detailed, systematic, and clear presentation of all aspects of celebrity studies, with a structure that carefully build its enquiry Draws on the latest scholarly developments in celebrity analyses Presents new and provocative ways of exploring celebrity's meanings and textures Considers the revolutionary ways in which new social media have impacted on the production and consumption of celebrity

Celebrity Cultures in Canada is an interdisciplinary collection that explores celebrity phenomena and the ways they have operated and developed in Canada over the last two centuries. The chapters address a variety of cultural venues—politics, sports, film, and literature—and examine the political, cultural, material, and affective conditions that shaped celebrity in Canada and its uses both at home and abroad. The scope of the book enables the authors to highlight the trends that characterize Canadian celebrity—such as transnationality and bureaucracy—and explore the regional, linguistic, administrative, and indigenous cultures and institutions that distinguish fame in Canada from fame elsewhere. In historicizing and theorizing Canada's complicated cultures of celebrity, Celebrity Cultures in Canada rejects the argument that nations are irrelevant in today's global celebrityscapes or that Canada lacks a credible or adequate system for producing, distributing, and consuming celebrity. Nation and national identities continue to matter—to celebrities, to fans, and to institutions and industries that manage and profit from celebrity systems—and Canada, this collection argues, has a vibrant, powerful, and often complicated and controversial relationship to fame.

This book studies the relationship between women, ageing and celebrity. Focusing on an array of case studies and star/celebrity images, it aims to examine the powerful, contradictory and sometimes celebratory ways in which celebrity culture offers a crucial site for the contemporary and historical construction of discourses on ageing femininities.

'An outstanding achievement... Graeme Turner writes with power and persuasion, and brilliantly explores what it is about celebrity today that should concern us all'- Sean Redmond, Deakin University'A key touchstone for celebrity studies. Turner thoughtfully illuminates the variety of production and consumption practices through which celebrity circulates today, whilst remaining sensitive to the complexity of power relations in play. An essential read for students and scholars in the field'- Sue Holmes, University of East Anglia'Cements Turner's status as the most important figure in celebrity studies... Turner's gaze fixes on developments in digital, social and global mediascapes, drawing media and celebrity studies into complex critical, political and cultural debates in his indomitable style'- James Bennett, Royal Holloway, University of London'An extraordinary synthesis of research and theory... Understanding Celebrity remains the go-to text of celebrity studies'- Joshua Gamsom, University of San Francisco Where does the production of celebrity end and its consumption begin? Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and reality TV allow us a previously unimagined engagement with the manufactured ′persona′ of celebrity. Understanding Celebrity has become the go-to text for understanding the connection between the production and consumption of this ′persona′. The long-awaited second edition assesses the changing nature of this pivotal relationship in celebrity studies. The book: Explains how social media is key in establishing an online presence for celebrities Critically analyses the changing nature of fan culture within the online environment Delves into a richer and more detailed account of the history of celebrity Examines in greater depth the increased role of reality TV Incorporates recent contributions from feminist scholars to the field Enriched with new examples drawn from popular culture, this is a contemporary and incisive look at celebrity studies. Understanding Celebrity is not only an essential text, but a stimulating read for students studying celebrity and popular culture across media studies, cultural studies and sociology.

Fashion on Television provides a comprehensive critical examination of the intersection between fashion, television and celebrity culture. The book brings together theoretical approaches to the symbolic force of television and fashion-forward programming on a global scale.Examining case studies such as Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, Ugly Betty and Mad Men, the book examines how TV has made style icons out of leading actresses and fashion-conscious consumers out of audiences. Using a varied methodology, including textual and contextual analysis, this study explores the cultural uses of onscreen fashion at the level of industry, text and intertext.Fashion on Television is essential reading for those seeking to understand the cultural function of costume in a television context. Written accessibly with a multi-disciplinary approach, it will appeal to students and scholars from film and media, fashion and cultural studies, to sociology and women's studies.

From reality television to celebrity gossip magazines, today's technologies have enabled a vast number of personal narratives that document our existence and that of others. Multiple academic disciplines now define the self as fluid and entirely changeable: little more than a performance that is chosen according to the situation. While news journalists still pursue the authentic narrative, advertising and politics might be accused of exploiting the narrative tendency, and across media the personal and public become increasingly merged. Real Lives, Celebrity Stories collects research from published and experienced professionals, practitioners and scholars who discuss narratives of real people across cultures and history and in multiple media. It uses narrative theory to interrogate the processes by which we create, promote and consume these stories of real people, and the ways in which we construct our own stories of self. By bringing together different disciplines it offers a theory of the production(s) of self in public spaces such as television, cinema, comics, fan cultures, music, news media, politics and cyberspace.

For fans of The Happiness Project and The Year of Living Biblically comes a pointed look at our fascination with celebrities, as one woman strives to remake herself in the image of her favorite stars. What woman hasn't seen pictures of Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow, or Beyoncé and wished she had their clothes, their abs, their seemingly flawless lives? For Rachel Bertsche, these celebrities are the epitome of perfection—self-assured and effortlessly cool. Yet lately, between juggling her career, her marriage, and her dream of becoming a mother, Bertsche feels anything but put together. In Jennifer, Gwyneth & Me, Bertsche embarks on a quest to emulate her Hollywood role models—while sticking to a budget—to see if they really hold the keys to happiness. While trying to unlock the stars'secrets, from Sarah Jessica Parker's wardrobe to Julia Roberts's sense of calm to—maybe one day—Jessica Alba's chic pregnancy, Bertsche learns valuable lessons. A toned body doesn't come easy or cheap, avoiding social media can do wonders for your peace of mind, and confidence is the key to pulling off any outfit. But can she immerse herself in the A-list lifestyle and still stay true to herself? And will her pursuit of perfection really lead to happiness?Praise for Jennifer, Gwyneth & Me “If you've ever had a celebrity girl crush, stick Jennifer, Gwyneth & Me in your beach bag. Bertsche is your people.”—Associated Press “[A] super-fun social experiment.”—PureWow “Bertsche ups the ante.... The well-researched information on celebrity culture provides food for thought.”—Booklist “What makes Jennifer, Gwyneth & Me work is Bertsche's honesty.... [She] is funny, creative and, more importantly, manages to stay sane.”—Boston Herald “An entertaining memoir about a woman's attempt to model her life on those of stars.”—Tampa Bay Times “A worthy narrative.”—The Boston Globe “Bertsche blends elements reminiscent of Julie & Julia and The Happiness Project in this ‘self-improvement journey.'... The process not only provides Bertsche with fruitful writing fodder but also prompts readers to examine their outlook on perfection, self-acceptance, and aspiring to be one's very best self.”—Publishers Weekly Praise for Rachel Bertsche's MWF Seeking BFF “Written with verve, insight, and humor... Bertsche writes cleverly, but not glibly, about the challenges young women face today.”—Chicago Tribune “[A] charming, funny chronicle.”—People

Stars do have real power, but not all of them wield it wisely. This work explores how a variety of celebrities developed their brands and how celebrity can become a jumping-off point to entirely unrelated activities.Over the past century, a new breed of entertainer has arisen—one where the old division between on-camera talent and the suits behind the scenes has largely eroded. From Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin to Lady Gaga and Quentin Tarantino, entertainers have attempted to cross specialties and platforms to new arenas, from politics to philanthropy and more. An ideal resource for general readers as well as students of American popular culture and media at the undergraduate through scholar level, Star Power: The Impact of Branded Celebrity details the new ways entertainers are working in expanded environments to broaden their brands while also providing the history behind this recent trend.The two-volume set comprises four main sections: one that provides historical background, a second on entertainers moving beyond stardom, a third focused on commerce and education, and a final section on cultural missions. The work documents how earlier entertainers'set the stage'for today's stars by exploiting their celebrity to take greater artistic control of their projects and provides articles that depict each artist from a number of perspectives. Readers will understand what motivates the most important contemporary entertainers working today and better grasp the business of entertainment as a whole—how Hollywood works, and who is really in control.

Celebrities attract the attention of commercial interests and other public figures. They receive payments from sponsors to endorse brands. They are sought out to appear with politicians during election campaigns. They are used to promote health messages. In other words, celebrities are often perceived to possess qualities that give them special value or what we will refer to here as'celebrity capital'. This means that celebrities are regarded as being able to add premium value to specific objects, events, and issues and hence render these items more valuable or effective. Employing an interesting and new approach to the growing scholarly interest in celebrity culture, Barrie Gunter uses the idea of value as expressed through the term'capital'. Capital usually refers to the monetary worth of something. Celebrity capital however can be measured in economic terms but also in social, political and psychological terms. Research from around the world has been collated to provide an evidence-based analysis of the value of celebrity in the 21st century and how it can be systematically assessed. Including further reading for students, key points and end of chapter discussion questions, Gunter creates the first methodology to assess the value of fame.

An engaging introduction to the key terms, concepts, dilemmas and issues that are central to the study and critical understanding of celebrity, exploring the impacts of celebrity culture on the modern media and examining the influence that celebrity has on the way people place themselves in the modern world.

Americans are obsessed with celebrities. While our fascination with fame intensified throughout the twentieth century, the rise of the weekly gossip magazine in the early 2000s confirmed and fueled our popular culture's celebrity mania. After a decade of diets and dates, breakups and baby bumps, celebrity gossip magazines continue to sell millions of issues each week. Why are readers, especially young women, so attracted to these magazines? What pleasures do they offer us? And why do we read them, even when we disagree with the images of femininity that they splash across their hot-pink covers? Andrea McDonnell answers these questions with the help of interviews from editors and readers, and her own textual and visual analysis. McDonnell's perspective is multifaceted; she examines the notorious narratives of celebrity gossip magazines as well as the genre's core features, such as the'Just Like Us'photo montage and the'Who Wore It Best?'poll. McDonnell shows that, despite their trivial reputation, celebrity gossip magazines serve as an important site of engagement for their readers, who use these texts to generate conversation, manage relationships, and consider their own ideas and values.

Winner of the 2015 Bonnie Ritter Book Award from the National Communication Association As an omnipresent figure of the media landscape, girls are spectacles. They are ubiquitous visual objects on display at which we are incessantly invited to look. Investigating our cultural obsession with both everyday and high-profile celebrity girls, Sarah Projanskyuses a queer, anti-racist feminist approach to explore the diversity of girlhoods in contemporary popular culture.The book addresses two key themes: simultaneous adoration and disdain for girls and the pervasiveness of whiteness and heteronormativity. While acknowledging this context, Projansky pushes past the dichotomy of the “can-do” girl who has the world at her feet and the troubled girl who needs protection and regulation to focus on the variety of alternative figures who appear in media culture, including queer girls, girls of color, feminist girls, active girls, and sexual girls, all of whom are present if we choose to look for them.Drawing on examples across film, television, mass-market magazines and newspapers, live sports TV, and the Internet, Projansky combines empirical analysis with careful, creative, feminist analysis intent on centering alternative girls. She undermines the pervasive “moral panic” argument that blames media itself for putting girls at risk by engaging multiple methodologies, including, for example, an ethnographic study of young girls who themselves critique media. Arguing that feminist media studies needs to understand the spectacularization of girlhood more fully, she places active, alternative girlhoods right in the heart of popular media culture.

Prozesse der Modernisierung, Pluralisierung und Differenzierung machen es immer schwieriger, gesellschaftliche Integrationsmomente zu etablieren. In einer derart komplexen Welt werden Ereignisse, denen weitreichende Integrationsfähigkeit zukommt z. T. weltweit über Medien konstruiert und kommuniziert. Dabei bringen die Medien - ähnlich der Mythen- und Ikonenbildung früherer Zeiten -'Heiligenbilder'hervor. Diese Neuerfindung von modernen Mythen in den Medien geht einher mit einer Entgrenzung professioneller journalistischer Handlungsspielräume, mit gewandelten Berichterstattungsmustern. Am primären globalen'Medienereignis'des Jahres 1997, dem Tod der Lady Diana Spencer, lassen sich diese Entwicklungen eindrucksvoll belegen und nachvollziehen.

Gesellschaften berufen sich bekanntlich auf ganze Kabinette berühmter Persönlichkeiten, Vorbilder und Leitfiguren als Repräsentanten ihrer Wertvorstellungen. Nun sind Ansehen und Prominenz längst nicht nur wenigen, entrückten Heldenfiguren vorbehalten. Im Gegenteil nimmt eine stete Umschichtung der Aufmerksamkeit ihren Lauf und das Phänomen der Prominenz ist eine breitere gesellschaftliche Erscheinung geworden. Hier gibt es einen wesentlichen Zusammenhang zu den (Neuen) Medien, die dem Einzelnen in seinem Streben nach Beachtung eine willkommene Bühne sind: Sie halten ein enormes Identifikationspotenzial bereit und machen die Herausbildung von Identität zu einer vielfältigen Angelegenheit. Der Band diskutiert diese Beobachtungen, fragt nach der gesellschaftlichen Bedeutung der Celebritykultur und reflektiert die Strategien medialer Darstellungen in Politik, Journalismus, Kunst und Popkultur.Mit Beiträgen von Andreas Beitin, Katrin Döveling, Georg Franck, Christoph Jacke, Katrin Keller, Hans Mathias Kepplinger, Wolfgang Krischke, Nina Metz, Bernhard Pörksen, Birgit Richard, Jörg Scheller, Christian Schicha, Martina Schuegraf und Alrun Seifert.

In his first book, National Post columnist Scott Feschuk offers a hilarious, satirical take on trends in television and our peculiar obsession with the famous, the infamous, and the nature of Tom Cruise's sexuality. Searching for Michael Jackson's Nose romps through the birth and the future of reality television, takes readers to the all-star parties thrown each summer by the major American television networks, and makes the case that what the world needs now is more – yes, more! – showbiz award shows. It pokes fun at Hollywood's rich and renowned, and also at Steve Guttenberg. It both applauds and skewers our intensifying fascination with the profoundly inconsequential: tribal councils, celebrity interviews, the crude romantic exploits of bachelors and bogus millionaires. And it takes us on a tour through the prevailing popular culture of the twenty-first century, with stops at the Starship Enterprise, Britney Spears, Sesame Street, the Oscars, Pamela Anderson, a naked Billy Baldwin, and the everchanging facial topography of the King of Pop.

Celebrity culture has a pervasive presence in our everyday lives – perhaps more so than ever before. It shapes not simply the production and consumption of media content but also the social values through which we experience the world. This collection analyses this phenomenon, bringing together essays which explore celebrity across a range of media, cultural and political contexts. The authors investigate topics such as the intimacy of fame, political celebrity, stardom in American ‘quality'television (Sarah Jessica Parker), celebrity'reality'TV (I'm a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!), the circulation of the porn star, the gallery film (David/David Beckham), the concept of cartoon celebrity (The Simpsons), fandom and celebrity (k.d. lang, •NSYNC), celebrity in the tabloid press, celebrity magazines (heat, Celebrity Skins), the fame of the serial killer and narratives of mental illness in celebrity culture. The collection is organized into four themed sections: Fame Now broadly examines the contemporary contours of fame as they course through new media sites (such as'reality'TV and the internet) and different social, cultural and political spaces. Fame Body attempts to situate the star or celebrity body at the centre of the production, circulation and consumption of contemporary fame. Fame Simulation considers the increasingly strained relationship between celebrity and artifice and ‘authenticity'. Fame Damage looks at the way the representation of fame is bound up with auto-destructive tendencies or dissolution.

The interrelationship between fashion and celebrity is now a salient and pervasive feature of the media world. This accessible text presents the first in-depth study of the phenomenon, assessing the degree to which celebrity culture has reshaped the fashion system.Fashion and Celebrity Culture critically examines the history of this relationship from its growth in the 19th century to its mutation during the twentieth century to the dramatic changes that have befallen it in the last two decades. It addresses the fashion-celebrity nexus as it plays itself out across mainstream cinema, television and music and in the celebrity status of a range of designers, models and artists. It explores the strategies that have enabled visual culture to recast itself in the new climate of celebrity obsession, popular culture and the art world to respond adaptively to its insistent pressures.With its engaging analysis and case studies from Lillian Gish to Louis Vuitton to Lady Gaga, Fashion and Celebrity Culture is of major interest to students of fashion, media studies, film, television studies and popular culture, and anyone with an interest in this global phenomenon.

Kanzlerin Merkel und SPD-Kontrahent Steinmeier, Unternehmenschef Mehdorn und Spitzenmanagerin Suckale: Mächtige Männer und Frauen in Politik, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft werden in diesem Band in ihrer medialen Repräsentation analysiert. Die Beiträge dokumentieren die Ergebnisse eines Forschungsprojektes und fragen, wie mit und durch Medien geschlechtsgebundene Bilder von Macht und Einfluss hergestellt werden. Präsentiert werden Befunde aus quantitativer Inhaltsanalyse, qualitativer Textanalyse, Bildanalyse, Gruppendiskussionen und Befragungen von Journalistinnen und Journalisten - eine methodische Verbindung, welche die Fortschreibung tradierter Männlichkeit sichtbar werden lässt und auf Formen der Modernisierung von Weiblichkeiten im Mediendiskurs verweist.