Celebrity Worship

Pete Ward

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138587083
• eBook ISBN: 9780429994937
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Celebrity Worship provides an introduction to the fascinating study of celebrity culture and religion. The book argues for celebrity as a foundational component for any consideration of the relationship between religion, media and culture. Celebrity worship is seen as a vibrant and interactive discourse of the sacred self in contemporary society.

Topics discussed include:

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• Celebrity culture.
• Celebrity worship and project of the self as the new sacred.
• Social media and the democratisation of celebrity.
• Reactions to celebrity death.
• Celebrities as theologians of the self.
• Christian celebrity.

Using contemporary case studies, such as lifestyle television, the religious vision of Oprah Winfrey and the death of David Bowie, this book is a gripping read for those with an interest in celebrity culture, cultural studies, media studies, religion in the media and the role of religion in society.

Chapter 1

Media, religion and celebrity

Celebrities are a missing piece in the Religion, Media and Culture jigsaw puzzle. That celebrity has been overlooked is curious because understanding it is fundamental to making sense of media as it operates in contemporary society. There is a simple reason for this; people form the fundamental substantive content of media representation and consumption. As a result, whatever form of media is being considered, there will always be people right at the heart of it. Whether thinking about social media, such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, or legacy media, such as magazines, film, television, or the music business, or technologies, such as the mobile phone, or Skype, each is primarily oriented towards the representation of people. Not just people, but individuals, or personalities. The vast majority of media representation and consumption boils down to images and stories, that are either narrated by, or focus upon, faces, voices and bodies. The media and the various ways in which individuals choose to participate and actively consume media, first and foremost, mediates people. Media stories always have a personal orientation or predilection, and this means that the study of media should rightly give full consideration to the people that are represented by it. These individuals, I am arguing, are celebrities. My definition of celebrity is quite simple, a celebrity is a mediated individual, or to put it another way, celebrity is what media processes do to individuals. Celebrity is the result of what media does to the representation of individuals, and the kinds of relationships that result between individuals who are represented in media, and those who consume these representations, and, as a result, have relationships with mediated individuals. It is worth stressing at the outset my use of the term mediation includes the active participation of audiences and individuals. I use the term media processes as a shorthand for the dynamic interaction that takes place between audiences and media in the interweaving and complexities of production, representation and consumption. The use of the terms mediation and media processes should not be read as endorsing a view of media as powerful influencers that determine how audiences behave and think, rather, these terms in my view describe complex interactions where audiences are engaged in making meaning in relation to production, representation and consumption. I take media processes and the idea of mediation as an arena in which audiences are actively shaping their own meanings. Celebrity then does not just refer to individuals who appear in the media, it also describes the kinds of relationships that audiences actively construct as they consume the representation of individuals by media technologies. Celebrities do not have to be special or talented necessarily, they simply need to be mediated and consumed. This means that with the advent of the mobile phone and with social media, celebrity has become democratised. The representation of the self online, and the consumption of stories and images of individuals posted online, has become so interwoven with daily life that mediation and the self are increasingly connected.

Celebrity culture is quite simply foundational for understanding media because people are at the heart of media. This observation brings a distinctive perspective to the developing conversation concerning Religion, Media and Culture. Celebrity focuses attention on the central role that mediated individuals play in various layers and complexities of relationship that have been traced between religion and media. Where religion has been represented in media, people are always central, and where religions pick up and use media technologies and forms of communication, the individual is generally the emotional heart of the communication, and these individuals function as a means of identification and connection. These are the dynamics of a Celebrity Worship, i.e. a culture where individuals are mediated and actively consumed by audiences. Religion therefore cannot be understood in relation to mediation without a thorough consideration of Celebrity Worship. Celebrity Studies and the study of Religion, Media and Culture, have a further connection. They both inhabit a sensibility that finds its origin in the wider field of Cultural Studies. This shared sensibility suggests that there is a common theoretical conversation that has influenced the way celebrity is studied, and the developing academic conversation concerning the relationship between religion and media. This common thread comes specifically from what has become known as British Cultural Studies, and in particular from the work of Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall.¹ This British tradition in Cultural Studies provides a basic family resemblance that enables an exploration of how religion and media and academic work on Celebrity Culture interact in their basic theoretical construction. They are, in short, related and parallel academic conversations. Understanding this commonality, however, also serves to suggest ways that each area might act to inform and nuance the other. This shared theoretical point of origin serves to structure a more extensive argument concerning the rightful place of the consideration of celebrity within academic work in Religion, Media and Culture.

Raymond Williams: a common sensibility

British Cultural Studies traces its roots to the work of two key figures, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall. Both Hall and Williams generated their theoretical frameworks because of what they saw as the inadequacies of Marxist cultural theory. Marxist criticism had advocated a cultural determinism where art and media are regarded as inevitably following the material conditions of economic relations. This approach can be briefly illustrated by reference to the Frankfurt School and the work of Theodore Adorno. For Adorno, what he called ‘mass culture’ was an extension of the forms of manipulation and propaganda that he had witnessed in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. Industrial processes and commercial interests, he argued, operated in very similar ways to that of the Nazi regime, in that they sought to co-opt, pacify and dupe the ‘masses’. The Culture Industry achieves this, Adorno argues, because workers seek an effortless form of sensation. This is delivered in the ‘standardisation’ that is a characteristic of the then fast emerging popular culture.² Mass Culture, or media, thus serve to reproduce and maintain social relationships that are determined by economics. This is what is often referred to as the base/superstructure argument, where culture is seen as the superstructure that derives its basic shape from the economic relations.

Raymond Williams is critical of the determinism inherent in Marxist critical theory. He makes two key moves as he develops his approach to culture. The first relates to mediation and the power of economic relations. The second formulates a complex interaction between the materiality of cultural and artistic forms and their place in society. In doing so he effectively fired the discursive starting gun for what became known as British Cultural Studies. Mediation as a term, Williams says, carries within it the notion of intercession or reconciliation, or interpretation, between opposing parties.³ This dualism is problematic in that it restricts the action of media to an indirect action that passes between two separate entities, e.g. Art and Society.⁴ In the discussion of popular culture this distinction lends itself to debates around the influence that media, such as film, or popular music, might have on society. Mediation suggests a relationship that is artificial, or an influence on social reality that comes via an alien or disconnected media.⁵ Here concern is focused on the effects and influence of media.⁶ In contrast to this dualism, Williams argues for mediation as a process that generates meaning and values. Mediation then is a ‘necessary form of the general social process of signification and communication.’⁷ Making this argument, Williams signals a crucial shift in cultural theory that places cultural processes of communication, rather than economics, at the centre of any understanding of society.

With the emphasis upon communicative processes and meaning making, Williams is then able to build a connection between the notion of mediation, and the ordinary and everyday lives of individuals and communities. He calls this a social definition of culture. For Williams, ‘the social definition of culture is descriptive of a particular way of life, which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour.’⁸ His emphasis on the ‘ordinary’ is developed as a refutation of the high culture/low culture distinction that had dominated cultural theory. Culture was not to be read as the communication of the best that had been thought and said, as Matthew Arnold had argued in the nineteenth century.⁹ Culture is concerned with values and meaning, but it is fundamentally ordinary and located in the everyday. This lived cultural reality, Williams describes as, a ‘structure of feeling.’ Williams adopts the notion of feeling as a retreat from more formal notions of ideology or worldview. Feeling denotes ‘meanings and values as they are actively lived.’¹⁰ It is an alternative to the determining nature of systematic, or formal ‘belief,’ but cultural analysis should attempt to trace the relationships between the formal, and the less defined affective dimensions of the everyday. At the same time, structure indicates notions of power, institutions and social class.

There is a key element that runs alongside, and through, Williams’ reframing of notions of mediation, the social process of meaning making in the lived, and the idea of culture as a structure of feeling, i.e. the signifying function of art. Williams was a literary critic, and also a novelist, and understanding the connections between society and art lay at the centre of his project. He therefore argued that there was a convergence that takes place between his anthropological notion of a whole way of life, and the more widespread acceptance that culture was concerned with artistic and intellectual activities. This convergence is practical, or part of a process and it is connected to what he calls ‘signifying practices.’¹¹ The material forms of art, or we might broaden this to media, form part of the processes of symbolic communication and meaning making. Understanding culture as a particular way of life necessarily involves understanding the relationship between the material forms of artistic (or media) expression and the signifying practices that make up ordinary life. These relationships, however, are not marginal or trivial, but necessary and essential to meaningful ways of life; they make up a ‘whole way of life.’¹²

The key sensibilities that shape Raymond Williams’ approach to culture, have been formative for both Celebrity Studies and scholarly work on religion and media. While the dialogue with Marxist cultural theory has ceased to be central to debates in these fields the remnants of the perspectives generated as a response to economic determinism and the high culture/low culture perspective remain. The Culture Industry argument, for example, continues to play a significant role in conversations. This translates into debates concerning how Celebrity Culture erodes news output, or how it trivialises political discourse. Similar concerns arise in relation to the impact that the media has on religious life and communities. In both disciplines, debate has developed around the way that cultural forms interact with the lived. High culture/low culture frameworks have been replaced by a focus on the ordinary, and this shift in focus is carried in the term, popular culture. Related to these ideas, there is the continuing interest, in both areas of academic work, in the processes of signification, and the interaction between representation in material, artistic, or media forms, and meaning making in the everyday. It is this aspect of Williams’ work that is taken up and developed by the other key figure in British Cultural Studies, Stuart Hall.

Stuart Hall: repr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of boxes
• Introduction
• 1. Media, religion and celebrity
• 2. Celebrity, religion and the sacred self
• 3. The roots and origins of Celebrity Culture
• 4. Celebrity, lifestyle and the self
• 5. The presentational self
• 6. Celebrity and religious change
• 7. Celebrities as theologians of the self
• 8. Celebrity death
• 9. Evangelical Celebrity Culture
• Bibliography
• Index