Celebrity Cultures

An Introduction

Lee Barron

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781473911352
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

What is celebrity? How do celebrities influence society? Why do we hang on their every word, tweet or status update?

Celebrity Cultures offers a fresh insight into the field of celebrity studies by updating existing debates and exploring recent developments. From the PR campaigns of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California, this book critically evaluates a number of diverse celebrity case-studies and considers what they reveal about contemporary global society. Taking into account issues such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, economics, politics and the media, the book draws upon a range of cultural theorists including Theodore Adorno and Jean Baudrillard.

Over the course of ten richly illustrated chapters, the book:

• Draws upon sociology, cultural theory, media analysis and celebrity commentary to explore and re-evaluate the study of celebrity.
• Examines the international appeal of celebrity including examples from India, China, South Korea and Indonesia.
• Includes chapter introductions identifying key points and annotated further reading suggestions.

Celebrity Cultures is an invaluable resource for students of celebrity, media and cultural studies.

1 The Ancient Art of Self-Publicity

Chapter overview

This chapter sets out the historical foundations of fame, a crucial place to start in evaluating the cultural impact of celebrity, as it stresses the ways in which common assumptions that celebrity is a contemporary social phenomena is not so clear-cut. While celebrity is closely associated with the rise of technologies of mass communication, the desire for fame, to stand out from the social mass, is deeply embedded within human civilizations, and has been for thousands of years. To fully articulate this view the chapter will focus upon:

• Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar’s personal quests for enduring fame and the techniques that they developed to ensure that their ‘celebrity’ was recognized in their own time and throughout subsequent history (for example, conveying their own history, making use of images to circulate their images), and effectively engaging in Public Relations
• The reign of Louis XIV with regard to means by which he saturated France with images of himself and indulged in publicity stunts that Daniel Boorstin would later famously dub ‘pseudo-events’)
• Fame, publicity, and image manipulation in early Hollywood

Ancient Attitudes to Celebrity

Within Illusions of Immortality, David Giles states that the ‘ultimate modern celebrity is the member of the public who becomes famous solely through media involvement’ (2000: 25). Similarly, Barry King (cited in Dyer, 1982) also suggests his own set of preconditions for stardom that (in addition to industrialization and a rigid separation of work and leisure) stress that the development of technologies of mass communication were an essential component. Furthermore, P. David Marshall (1997) argues that the ‘audiences’ of these technologies emerged in the twentieth century (from large-scale social masses) as the power-givers to celebrities, as the sustainers of celebrity power and cultural influence. Moving through cinema, radio, and television to multi-channel TV, movies on demand, Internet blogs, and social networking sites, the means with which the public ‘consumes’ celebrity has only seemingly confirmed that the pantheon of celebrities that currently fill the cultural landscape are the product of a media-technology society. Be it via traditional ‘mass communication’ mediums such as cinema and television, or through ‘new media age’ forms that are more individually controlled and accessed, such as YouTube (Iezzi, 2010), celebrity is perceived to be a phenomenon of the modern world. So, from the early silent cinematic romances of Rudolf Valentino and the drama and glamour of later Hollywood, to the Reality TV antics of the denizens of Jersey Shore or the TV exploits of the Kardashian family, we can see how central the role of media/mass communication technologies have been and continue to be in the transmission of celebrity personalities, and the public construction of celebrity identities. However, although the existence of a celebrity culture is deemed to be a modern social phenomenon, the desire for fame and the resultant public adulation that fame bestows upon an individual is not limited to modern media-saturated societies; far from it. Here are the musings of Leo Braudy:

Gazing back from a world in which the production and multiplication of images is in the hands of many, we might wonder what it meant to be famous when the means of communication were slow and the methods primitive. (1986: 15)

Actually, there are discernible connections between the media-constructed/consumed celebrities of contemporary society and the pursuit of renown in the distant past. Indeed, on analysis it quickly becomes clear that even in pre-media ancient civilizations the intense desire for individual fame was manifest, if not, as Robert Garland states, already displaying pathological levels of obsession. To illustrate, Garland cites the example of the arsonist Herostratus who, in 348 BCE Turkey, set fire to the great temple of Artemis simply because of the fame and renown that the act would bestow upon him, suggesting that ‘something approximating to a celebrity culture was already alive and well over two thousand years ago’ (2010: 485).

Herostratus’ pursuit of fame is also striking with regard to the parallels that it has with more extreme forms of contemporary celebrity, primarily that of the ascent to celebrity status of multiple murders and, most dramatically, the ‘serial killer’ (as will be discussed in Chapter 10). However, there were other individuals in antiquity who also sought fame effectively through violence, albeit on a grander, military scale, and who combined acts of supreme achievement with a knowing awareness of the ways in which a famous public image can be cultivated and communicated. And the exemplar of this process is unquestionably Alexander the Great.

Alexander the Great: History’s First Celebrity?

The cultural theorist Chris Rojek (2001), author of the book Celebrity, one of the first major and highly influential evaluations of celebrity culture, argues that Alexander the Great (born in 356 BCE and died in 323 BCE) possesses the status of being the first ‘pre-figurative’ celebrity in history, an individual who achieved global fame in an age that lacked any means of the mechanical reproduction and widespread dissemination of information and images. Alexander was granted the status of ‘ascribed celebrity’ during the lifetime of his father, Philip, King of the Macedonians (fame bestowed through monarchical lineage), but that was too restrictive, so Alexander alternatively sought fame achieved by his own means. Thus, ‘Alexander aimed to become a universal, unquestionable “presence” in everyday life. He sought to inscribe himself on public consciousness as a man apart, a person without precedent’ (2001: 30). As such, Alexander would ultimately constitute a key early possessor of the four key qualifications of fame: ‘a person and an accomplishment, their immediate publicity, and what posterity has thought about them ever since’ (Braudy, 1986: 15). But how did a man achieve such fame without the stock communicative technologies and agents that have characterized the acquisition, communication, and ‘selling’ of celebrity that have become the defining factors of the culture of fame from the early twentieth century? How did Alexander ensure that his name would be immortal?

For the Christian philosopher, St Augustine, Alexander the Great was nothing more than a roguish pirate ‘infesting the earth!’ (1984: 139); however, Alexander is conventionally read in far grander ways. For instance, the novelist Mary Butts (author of the 1931 novel, The Macedonian) encapsulated his achievements in life and his legacy since his death in the following, distinguished fashion: ‘There are men who sum up an epoch, and men who begin another. Alexander did both’ (cited in Cartledge, 2004: 4–5). Consequently, the dominant perception of Alexander the Great is that he is not merely a figure from history, but that he is a history maker. Therefore, at one level the answer appears to be quite simple: Alexander achieved his fame via acts of military conquest that saw him leave Macedonia in 335 BCE to initiate his military campaign against Darius III of Persia and continue through Asia to ultimately invade India. Therefore, Alexander was one of the ancient world’s greatest military leaders who literally stamped his mark on the world. But there is more to the story than that. History is replete with highly successful conquerors (from Hannibal, Attila, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane, to Napoleon and Hitler), and while they are all certainly famous (if not often infamous) in a historical sense, nevertheless they are not routinely regarded as being celebrity-like. And yet, Alexander the Great is.

This is because Alexander provides a blueprint for some subsequent rulers who did wish to be seen as extraordinary and who did wish to actively cultivate their fame in their own lifetimes, and beyond. And this is why, although an oft-told tale within academic accounts of celebrity, Alexander needs to be looked on as a key architect of the ‘rules’ of celebrity and the acquisition of fame because, as Paul Cartledge notes, ‘Alexander had a clear perception of himself, driven by a desire for recognition by others, to be seen as more than merely mortal, but rather, as in some way superhuman or divine’ (2004: 17). And how he did this is why the history of celebrity must begin with Alexander the Great.

In addition to Alexander’s extraordinary military achievements, he ‘was one of the first Greeks... to be worshipped as a god in his lifetime’ (Cartledge, 2004: 215). Significantly, though, this perception was the result of deliberate design by Alexander as the early historian Plutarch’s assessment of Alexander’s lineage concludes: ‘It is certain that Alexander was descended from Hercules’ (Plutarch, 1998: 385). Thus, Alexander arguably knew exactly what he was doing with regard to the perception of his image but how was a ‘globally’ recognized name established in a world without a mass communication system or any mechanical means with which to reproduce text and images? To answer this question, we turn again to the work of Giles, because in his view, the conspicuous pursuit of fame by Alexander coincided with both social and psychological developments within human societies of the time to the extent that ‘the history of fame is about nothing less than the history of Western civilization. It is also about the history of the individual, and therefore it is about the history of human psychology, too’ (2000: 12).

The development of individual consciousness within human society, argues Giles, arose with the practice of naming (argued to have begun in the Mesolithic period), and the emergence of mourning and ceremonial burial and the worship of certain individuals (invariably royalty) as gods. Of the latter, stories of venerated individuals were told orally until more widely facilitated by the development of writing. However, alongside the dissemination of stories concerning particular individuals, writing also established the development of a distinctive form of literature; fictional accounts that not only had a considerable impact on early ‘audiences’, but which also began to actually influence human behaviour and thought. The most influential examples of this early literature (and its distinctive and dramatic social and cultural impact) were Homer’s epic works The Iliad and The Odyssey, two texts which Giles argues not only communicated the concept of ‘everlasting fame’, but also, most importantly, valorized it. It was these two texts, argues Braudy, which crystallized the idea of the meaning of heroism, and it was Homer’s articulation of the figure of the hero that influenced Alexander the Great’s self-conscious quest for fame.

Ancient Strategies for Gaining Fame

Within his now-classic and influential study of fame, The Frenzy of Renown, Leo Braudy articulates why Alexander the Great deserves to be called the genuinely first famous person in human history, and charts the particular pattern that he followed in his deliberate attempt to achieve this status. In essence, it was in reaction to the heroic exploits found within the pages of the Iliad, and most notably in imitation of the epic’s central figure, Achilles. Like Achilles, Alexander sought fame through prowess in battle and through the conquest of armies and territories, and ‘was impelled by an urge to see and do more than any Macedonian or Greek had before’ (1986: 32). Indeed, while the ancient world had no shortage of rulers who were engaged in the process of accruing wealth and land, waging war, and destroying enemies, Alexander the Great (while engaging in all of those exploits) significantly differed from them. As Braudy states, it would be Alexander who would stay fixed in the world’s imagination, and not, crucially, merely for the magnitude of his military achievements, but for something else: for what was ‘immaterial’ about his achievements. Thus, when Alexander was analysed by early historians, the perception that his drive for conquest was more than simply for the spoils of war was a constant refrain; it was also characterized by the belief that Alexander was driven by something internal and mystical in nature. Therefore Braudy believes that:

In his short life of thirty-three years, Alexander constantly posed, fulfilled, and then went far beyond a series of new roles and new challenges until he himself was the only standard by which he could be measured. At the head of his army, his eyes forever on the horizon, he stood self-sufficient but never self-satisfied. Unlike the time-and-role-bound rulers of the more ancient civilizations, who believed that their greatest achievement was to come into accord with the rhythms of dynastic history, he sought to be beyond time, to be superior to calendars, in essence to be remembered not for his place in an eternal descent but for himself. (1986: 32)

In 334 BCE, Alexander and his army left Macedonia to invade the Persian Empire in order to initiate the first of the challenges that he believed would fix his name in history, and it was within this military campaign that Alexander truly differentiated himself from previous conquerors; this revealed why it is that Alexander is such a central figure in the story of fame, and ultimately, celebrity – because, not only was Alexander influenced by the literary exploits of Achilles, but, via his mother, Olympias of Molossia, Alexander actually considered himself to be a direct genealogical descendant of Achilles, embodying all of Achilles’ traits as both a heroic and fearless warrior and a military leader. Consequently, the campaign against Persia was not simply an act of war and a means for territorial conquest, but it assumed a potent symbolic character in that Alexander likened it to the Greek siege and ultimate destruction of the city of Troy. Therefore, in the midst of invasion and battle, Alexander began to weave a story of his own, complete with what can only be described as carefully staged ‘publicity’ events. And the most memorable and significant of these occurred in the city of Gordium. This is because on Alexander’s arrival in the city:

Word reached him of a local curiosity, a chariot in the palace of the former kings of Phrygia which was linked by legend to king Midas’s accession at Gordium four hundred years before. It had been dedicated to a Phrygian god to whom the officers identified with Zeus the king, Alexander’s royal ancestor and guardian, and it was bound to its yoke by a knot of cornel-bark which no man had ever been able to undo. (Lane Fox, 1997: 137)

Expanding on the tale, Braudy notes that the Gordian knot was akin to the Arthurian legend of the sword in the stone: a test that only the true king could succeed in. The symbolic value was clear: whoever untied the knot would rule Persia. Initially, Alexander attempted to undo the knot by hand, but it would not yield. But rather than admit defeat (and face public humiliation in the eyes of his senior soldiers), Alexander effectively and audaciously ‘rewrote the rules of the game’ by cutting the knot apart with his sword in order to reveal the secret of the knot and thus untie it. The significance of this act was that rather than representing simply a face-saving act (or even being an aggressive fit of kingly pique), the cutting of the Gordian knot represented, arguably, a unique precursor to the modern publicity stunt. This is because what Alexander did in Gordium ostensibly represented what Daniel Boorstin, within his seminal work on fame, The Image (first published in the early 1960s), would dub a ‘pseudo-event’.

Historical Pseudo-Events

Boorstin’s argument within The Image is quintessentially a pessimistic one. His central argument is that since 1900 Western culture has witnessed the transformation of the ‘hero’ into the ‘celebrity’, a process initiated by the ‘Graphic Revolution’, the products of the mass communication system consisting of magazines, television, cinema, radio, and newspapers. The major cultural impact of the Graphic Revolution was its ability to create famous people ‘overnight’, and to effectively fabricate ‘well-knownness’ (1992: 47). From a litany of classical heroes, such as Jesus, Joan of Arc, Shakespeare, George Washington, Napoleon, and Abraham Lincoln – individuals marked by achievements of ‘greatness’ – the prevalence of individuals promoted by the media system constitutes Boorstin’s now-classic definition of the ‘celebrity’ as the individual ‘who is well-known for their well-knownness’ (1992: 57). In Boorstin’s view, the contemporary landscape of fame (Hollywood, for example) is one characterized not so much by genuine achievement, but rather by superficial media-created diversions sustained by a series of ‘pseudo-events’ – purposefully produced publicity-seeking episodes initiated by studios or public relations professionals and representatives. Pseudo-events are deliberately planned and staged ‘for the immediate purpose of being reported or reproduced’ and arranged ‘for the convenience of the reporting media’ (1992: 40). Although clearly a man of considerable military and material achievement, Alexander nevertheless recognized that to imprint his identity onto the culture of his time (and ultimately beyond it), something else was required: that his image needed to be communicated in a dramatic fashion, and manipulated.

Thus, although the pseudo-event is habitually seen as a comparatively new addition to the celebrity arsenal, the point of events that are purposely designed to be perceived by the wider community is applicable to Alexander, and it is why he is such an important figure within the history of fame – because, as Braudy states, the fact that Alexander cut the Gordian knot meant that he went beyond the traditional stipulations of the puzzle, to solve it by untying it. Instead, Alexander created his own solution, and by doing so, he set himself apart from all others who had failed in the endeavour. So, while there was no media system to report his deed, it still had a similar effect: it became the subject of talk. But the cutting of the knot was also a key moment in the differentiation of Alexander from his royal and military forerunners and peers because it was a decisive ‘act that propelled him once again beyond the usual triumphs of kings and conquerors into the realm of imagination’ (Braudy, 1986: 35). This was Alexander’s ultimate goal. Accordingly, when ...