Last Monday. Lauren and I were discussing the relevance and importance of celebrity culture. Our discussion lead me to think about the content that is posted daily, and beyond that, the potential meaning it has on a grander scale. I readily admit that I engage in the cult of celebrity. I read Perez Hilton daily, I know about Patrick Swayze and what defamatory comments Jessica Alba has made recently. But is there something more to it than just that? Beyond all of the standard trash talk and music recommendations, we both saw the medium becoming something much bigger.
Every once and a while, Perez will deviate from his normal practice of drawing coke noses on paparazzi photos and give some sort of commentary on what's going on in the world -- be it reports on which democratic candidate is his pick, what the situation is Venezuela is, or what's the deal with the writer's strike.
All of this eventually lead me back to something that Duncombe said in the chapter "Recognize Everyone:"
"In the absence of a unifying moral textbook, celebrity gossip becomes one of the places where we work out what is right and what is wrong and, through our interpretations of the actions of these characters eke out a moral code to live by"(Duncombe, 113-4).
When Hilton posts these pieces of non-celebrity text, there's usually the typical wave of offensive comments, but what I'm beginning to see is real, thought out responses and commentary on what has been written; actual engagement with the information that Hilton has provided. While it may not be completely constructive or rational, it still is providing people with a forum to express their responses to the content that has just been published. What does this do to the shape of the moral text book that we create? I'm really beginning to see that there could be more to this entire thing than just the notions that" cocaine is bad, adoption is great” that people have typically been getting from the gossip provided. If this can be used as a tool to shape mores, then can it be a jumping point for readers to become actively involved in the world outside of junk entertainment? And, if social norms are being established, along with interactions with the political, will this become a forum to make politics something to be more readily engaged with, rather than something tedious and out of reach?
Duncombe, Stephen. Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy. New York: The New Press, 2007.
1 comment:
good post, kayla. it seems like duncombe has influenced your thinking, at least in terms of how you're thinking about celebrity/junk culture. you ask: is there anything to be gained by one's daily engagement with celebrity sites like perezhilton.com? do the discursive structures and participatory cultures of celebrity gossip sites have anything to teach us about how politics and culture can not only find an audience but incite an audience to make connections between politics and culture. why not think through a recent example from perez hilton and unpack the politics at work in the post?
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