Do we live in a celebrity-dominated consumer culture - Essay Example

?Vlahos, K. B. July). Born to Consume: For MTV, Teen Pregnancy Is Big Business. The American Conservative, 10(7), 22+. "FOR THOSE WHO don't watch MTV, it may take a hundred turns through the grocery aisle to realize who these attractive young women are. They look like any other celebrity--stalked by paparazzi while doing everyday chores, babies slung on the hip in one frame, bikini-clad in the quintessential beach-comber shot in the next. There's the requisite drama with the familiar bold-letter headlines, the words interchangeable: police, custody battle, diet, plastic surgery, wedding, party, sex. They look familiar, but you can't place them--unless you're familiar with MTV's top-rated "16 and Pregnant" or "Teen Mom" reality-television shows. These young women are celebrities all right: they're famous for having babies in high school. Big media corporations--which liberal scholar Robert McChesney once compared to the 19th-century British Empire, with teens "like Africa"--have drilled the depths of youth exploitation once more, successfully packaging the titillation of teen sex, the burgeoning "baby mama" market, and the old voyeuristic pleasure of watching someone else's domestic dysfunction unfold. MTV would have us believe this human spectacle is a public service, a "cautionary tale" for young girls akin to the "after school specials" of the 1970s. But one glance at the marquee-name advertisers taking up real estate in MTV's pregnant teen universe--on the programs' websites and weekly broadcasts--and it's obvious this is big business. In a free society, Milton Friedman wrote in Capitalism and Freedom, "there is one and only one social responsibility of business--to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." But a parent must wonder whether MTV is pushing past the boundaries of what Friedman called "ethical custom" and into "deception," going beyond mere exploitation to put teenage girls--as well as society--at risk. "With 'Teen Mom,' you are playing with real lives here--the lives of real women and their children," says Gail Dines, a professor at Wheelock College and author of Pornland, which examines modern pornography as a business and its influence on popular culture. "They should not be treated as fodder." But that's exactly how they are treated. MTV executives deny it, but when their young subjects vie for space with J-Lo and Jolie on the covers of People and Us Magazine, it's hard to say the shows aren't glamorizing teen motherhood. At a time when poorer, less educated teens in the U.S. are statistically more at risk of having children out of wedlock, this drive for market share feels predatory and seedy and feeds right into an American culture beset by narcissistic, self-destructive behavior” Tafaro, E. A., & Zuccarello, F. (2012, July-August). Chopped Chef: Celebrity Chefs Have Become Big Business. Not Having Adequate Disability Insurance for Them Can Be a Recipe for Disaster. Risk Management, 59(6), 16+. "If you are a Baby Boomer, you probably remember the cooking show The French Chef. Filmed live and uncut, you could hear the pots and pans bang, oven doors squeak, and chef Julia Child's singsong patter about life in the kitchen. It wasn't terribly exciting, but Child became a pop-culture icon and was in many ways the first true celebrity chef. But somewhere along the way that tiny kitchen on Julia Child's low-budget set became "Kitchen Stadium" on Food Network's popular Iron Chef series. It became a place where chefs enter a culinary arena like gourmet gladiators, accompanied by blaring music, blinding lights that could illuminate an airport runway and the almost surreal sight of a man hoisting a $100,000 camera on his back while zooming in on the perfect close-up of a stick of butter melting in a frying pan. Today's celebrity chefs are treated like rock stars because they get paid like rock stars, led by Gordon Ramsay and his empire of restaurants, TV shows, cookbooks and endorsements worth a reported $38 million last year. But what happens if a celebrity chef is injured and can no longer perform? After all, the kitchen is a pretty dangerous place; knives are sharp, pans are hot, floors are slippery. Plus, with television there is the added element of a ticking clock. In the time it might take you or me to read through a cookbook to even find a six-course meal to prepare, these gourmet geniuses are already plating. If a high-profile celebrity chef is knocked out of the culinary game for a period of time, how does that affect his or her income? And how does it affect the overall "brand" and the businesses that rely on their name?" (Tafaro & Zuccarello, 2012) Faludi, S. (2000, January/February). The Masculine Mystique. Tikkun, 15(1), 70+. "So many people are invested in their status quo while claiming to be against their status quo. We need to put our energies for this new millennium into building a society that genuinely serves human needs rather than just whetting consumer appetite. We should build a world which is engaged in the home-grown and not the corporate, a world in which individuals have a stake, occupations have a purpose beyond making money, society is judged in terms besides the amassing of money, and our lives are "about" something. We need to rebuild communities that are real rather than electronic town squares which are built out of commercial needs and do not actually promote deep human connection. When we don't have such a society, we get the current anger between men and women. So much of what is causing men pain today is not feminism, but the way men have been stripped of a role in which they can have meaningful social purpose. Men have traditionally been defined in terms of what they can bring to and contribute to the public sphere. When that capacity to give and contribute is severely undermined, as it is in our current consumer culture, men often feel an inchoate rage that gets misdirected and vented upon others. The more we live in a consumer culture void of civic life and community, a culture in which men are invited to define themselves by image, appearance, celebrity, display value, and sex appeal, the more pain they experience. Men are being slotted into the same position that women were sucked into in the 195 Os. They feel entrapped in a deadening consumer culture, they don't feel honored for being decent fathers and husbands, and the places they go to feel socially useful are given short shrift in the culture. They can't even feel useful in their work, because increasingly they are making money creating things that have no real meaning to them. They may amass huge profits for a company that has no real product but that has tremendous potential as perceived by others in the stock market. They are creating something they don't think they can believe in, but they are supposed to rejoice because they are making money doing so." (Faludi, 2000) Stephen, A. (2003, December 1). It All Started with O J Simpson. Now, the 24-Hour News Channels Find That Accusations of Celebrity Crime Boost the Ratings like Nothing Else, Even War. New Statesman (1996), 132(4666), 11+. "You take your dog to the vet. But the assistant is more concerned with Scott Peterson than she is with Buster's rash. "Has Scott got bail?" she asks excitedly, as though thirsting for news from the outside world. Scott? He is a 31-year-old former fertiliser salesman who is charged in California with the murder of his pregnant wife last Christmas. He has highlights in his hair (according to someone who knows more than me about these things) and has received dozens of marriage proposals; and he has become a household name in this country because of the direction being taken by the competing 24 hour news channels. To give an example, I watched an entire hour of news on Fox last week and, except for a minute's worth of news on the half-hour, every second was devoted to Michael Jackson and the child molestation charges against him. Jackson is currently flavour of the month in this new television celebrity culture. Before him came Scott Peterson, and intermingling with both has been the basketball star Kobe Bryant, charged with late-night rape in his hotel room. The news channels have discovered that celebrity crime--or, rather, accusing a celebrity of committing a crime--boosts the ratings like nothing else, even war. Peterson's case would have gone down in history as nothing but a very sad instance of domestic murder, had television not turned him into both the boy next door and a glamorous celebrity--the alleged murderer we all know but who (in reality) now faces the executioner's needle. We even know the name of his girlfriend--Amber Frey, for the curious-and that he told her he was a widower when his wife and unborn child went missing." (Stephen, 2003) Giroux, H. A. (2005, September/October). Lost in Translation. Tikkun, 20(5), 46. "Democracy begins to fail, and political life becomes impoverished, when society can no longer translate private problems into public, social issues. Unfortunately, that is precisely what is happening in the United States today. In a post-9/11 world, the space of shared responsibility has given way to the space of private fears; the social obligations of citizenship are reduced to the highly individualized imperatives of consumerism; and the language of public life is emptied of all substantive content and becomes a playground for endlessly enacting and reinforcing the banal privatized fantasies produced by shopping malls and celebrity culture. As the public collapses into the personal, the personal becomes "the only politics there is," to quote anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff. Under such circumstances, the language of the social is either devalued or ignored. Public life is often reduced to a form of pathology. In contemporary political discourse, "public schools," "public transportation," and "public welfare" have become dirty words. All dreams of the future are now modeled around the narcissistic, privatized, and self-indulgent needs of consumer culture and the dictates of the alleged free market. Stripped of its ethical and political importance, the public has been largely reduced to a giant reality-TV show where notions of the public register as simply a conglomeration of private woes, tasks, conversations, and problems." (Giroux, 2005, p. 46) Cox, P. L. (2004). Charles Lindbergh and Mobiloil: The New Model for Modern Celebrity Endorsement. Journalism History, 30(2), 98+. "Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo flight in the "Spirit of St. Louis" from New York to Paris made the young, unknown aviator an overnight, internationally known celebrity. The press nicknamed him "Lucky Lindy" and the "Lone Eagle." Immediately after his journey, he received dozens of awards and became the premier figure in celebrations and parades in Europe, South America, Canada, and the United States. He flew the "Spirit of St. Louis" on a nationwide tour, creating widespread public support for air travel and airmail, and President Calvin Coolidge gave Lindbergh the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Hying Cross for his achievement. As the New York Times stated on the fiftieth anniversary of his trans-Atlantic flight, "A fame enveloped the 25-year-old American that was to last him for the remainder of his life, transforming him in a frenzied instant from an obscure aviator into a historical figure."1 "Lindbergh put the spotlight on aviation as never before," said F. Robert van der Linden, a historian and curator at the National Air and Space Museum. "All of a sudden, you saw people pouring millions of dollars into aviation investments, and in the 1930's passenger service to Europe would start." American historian Daniel Boorstin concluded that Lindbergh "performed single-handed one of the heroic deeds of the century." In his biography Lindbergh, Leonard Mosley stated the solo flight across the Atlantic created an unprecedented international sensation. "To millions of simple people, he was no longer flying for himself but for humanity; he was not simply flying to Paris but blazing the trail to a better life."2 After his monumental flight, Lindbergh assumed a leadership role in transforming the aviation industry. Within a few years, aircraft construction boomed, and all of the major cities in the nation had airports. While these accolades bestowed on him were valid, many historians and journalists have overlooked his contribution to public relations and advertising history. "Lucky Lindy" became one of the first and most successful high-profile international celebrities associated with a consumer product-Mobiloil. Shortly after his dramatic arrival in Paris, he cabled the Vacuum Oil Company, the producer of Mobiloil: "In my flight from New York to Paris my engine was lubricated with Gargoyle Mobiloil 'B' and I am happy to say that it gave me every satisfaction. My engine functioned perfectly." As part of a carefully planned advertising and promotional campaign, the corporation that produced Mobiloil began to reap immense benefits from his notoriety.3" (Cox, 2004) Taylor, A. (2003). What's New about 'The New Femininity'? Feminism, Femininity and the Discourse of the New. Hecate, 29(2), 182+. "In both popular and academic discourses, the trope of the 'new' has been commonly mobilised to signify shifts in social subjectivity for women. The new--in relation to woman or femininity--is regularly used as a marker of social change, invoking an anterior femininity which it has superseded. In teleological narratives about feminism, this new woman is conceived as the end product of feminist activism. This paper, by considering a particular deployment of the new, engages with how feminism is made to mean in contemporary media culture. In particular, I am concerned with how discourses of the new, choice and girlpower attempt to delimit the meanings of those shifting, heterogeneous and contested signifiers, feminism and femininity. To ground my discussion of feminism, media and consumer culture, I focus on one particular but representative instance taken from an Australian print media context, a supplement entitled The New Femininity' along with its feature article, 'Girlie Power', published by the Sydney newspaper, The Sun Herald. Drawing on recent critical work on the trope of the new, I examine whether this particular representation of femininity, and its claims of negotiating a 'new' relationship between femininity and feminism, are either sustainable or desirable. The new femininity, as articulated with the mainstream media text interrogated here, purports to be new in two specific ways: first that femininity, as opposed to being denigrated, is being celebrated by a global culture, and second, that women's gendered expression is characterised by a voluntarism which is both cause and effect of this new (commodified) femininity. As I will argue, the new femininity offers the privileged subject position of the consumer. Although a type of feminism can indeed be seen as underpinning the discursive construction of femininity offered in The Sun Herald's 'Girlie Power' article, my analysis, drawing on Rosemary Hennessy's Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse, highlights how deployment of the new can work to shore up, rather than contest, a particular symbolic order. In considering the relationship between the 'new femininity' and girlpower discourses, my discussion of the 'Girlie Power' feature article finds its rhetorical strategies characteristic of texts and contemporary media sites that deploy girlpower discourses to reconcile 'feminism' with 'femininity'." (Taylor, 2003) Kissling, E. A. (2005). Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery. Western Folklore, 64(1/2), 130+. "Blum notes, however, that critical demands for "more realistic" media images are ineffectual: "To imagine that there are people who could change the images if they wanted to is to misunderstand the embeddedness of the image producers in a cultural machinery that they don't run but instead merely service. For them, as well as us, the linage and beauty are coextensive" (p. 65). Feminist calls for resistance to the beauty myth are no better, for there is no way to step outside the cultural frame and distinguish between genuine desires and those that are merely distortions of consumer capitalism. Blum cautions that in fact, "[w]e need to transcend feminist criticisms of body practices that can wind up being as shaming as the physical imperfections that drove us to beautify in the first place" (p. 63). I find little to disagree with in this analysis, as fer as it goes, but find it strange that there is so little explicit consideration of the role of patriarchal structures in the increasingly high demands for feminine beauty. For example, although it's true that more men seek cosmetic surgery than ever before, Blum offers little discussion of how the need for male approval may influence women's choices to seek surgery. (And having recently read several devastating feminist critiques of the popularity of "labia reduction" and "vaginal rejuvenation" surgeries, I can't help but wonder what Blum's take on those procedures would be.)" (Kissling, 2005) "Blum has written a provocative and thoughtful exploration of contemporary American interest in cosmetic surgery and its influence on identity. Her analysis is scholarly, but with a personal tone that is neither tangential nor overly confessional. She asserts that three cultural phenomena have profoundly shaped the experience of American life in the twentieth century: celebrity culture, psychoanalysis, and plastic surgery. Blum skillfully weaves these three threads together to develop an innovative picture of how identity is increasingly rooted in two-dimensional images. Her analysis includes examination of selected literature (including Frankenstein, of course) and films in which plastic surgery is key to transformation of identity, as well as interviews with several plastic surgeons and observations of surgeries. Regrettably, she provides little background about the interviews or how candidates were identified and selected for interviews, and no indication of an interview protocol. Blum briefly and knowledgeably rehearses some truisms of contemporary feminist theory-such as the way feminine identity is shaped by the male gaze so that woman becomes both an object and a subject to herself-to develop her thesis. She recognizes that it is widely assumed that people-especially women-are influenced to change their appearance by omnipresent images of impossible-to-achieve beauty. But Blum rejects the claim that surgery is on a continuum with other forms of body modification such as chemical hair straightening or curling, tooth bleaching, and starvation diets; among other criticisms, she notes that these practices have a comparatively low risk of fatality. Blum regards the acceptance of risk of death in exchange for beauty as indicative of the degree to which we identify with the two-dimensional. Blum focuses on the narrowing distinction between the human and the two-dimensional in our cultural definition of beauty and its pursuit. "We are immersed in visual culture to the degree that we become its embodied effects," making the specific content of the image thus less important than the general yearning for identification with the image per se. Cosmetic surgery ultimately transforms the patient's image as much as it transforms her body, as beauty comes to be defined as photogenicity. This identification with media images ultimately puts us at risk for "a lifetime of transformational identifications" because images are inherently changeable, two-dimensional, and technologically constituted." (Kissling, 2005) Landers, R. (2007). Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture. Anglican Theological Review, 89(1), 152+. "Consumer culture changes religious belief and practice, for worse or better. This book details the nature and shape of the transformation, with suggested tactics for countering the detrimental effects. Miller carefully describes the genesis of consumer culture and the rise of advertising in twentieth century America. The single-family home becomes the basic social unit where people are thrust into an unprecedented need to consume. Today, even those with little money spend for physical needs but also to establish social identity through conspicuous consumption. Advertisement courts the public with messages that school them into aggressive spending habits. Religion under the influence of consumer forces is diluted, marked by distraction and a wandering eye. Religious consumerism is evident in the international celebrity of spiritual figures (the Dalai Lama, John Paul II, and Mother Teresa), audio samples of religious music mixed into pop songs, incorporation of religions imagery and visual art in music videos and other commodities, and the spiritual texts and content widely accessible in hooks and on the Internet. Religious content once issued from communities and institutions with roots in a given practice, but now is abstracted from its context. Miller is doubtful that the life and works of religious celebrities are properly interpreted. Religious language and imagery surface in bookstore chains, on cable TV, and other secular outlets. The limits of such religious commodities to shape authentic faith and practice, Miller argues, are due in part to the shopper's (seekers) insatiable desire. Religion is one among main options in an endless stream. If spirituality is increasingly a habit of consumer choice, and religious commodities are obtained without awareness of the communities that originate them, in most cases individuals will not be able to sustain commitment or practice." (Landers, 2007) Fairclough, K. (2008). Fame Is a Losing Game: Celebrity Gossip Blogging, Bitch Culture and Postfeminism. Genders, (48). "[1] From "outing" well known actors to breaking news of celebrity pregnancies or mental breakdowns, the gossip blog has become a key component of contemporary celebrity culture--one that is arguably usurping more traditional gossip forums such as the weekly magazine. Perez Hilton, one of the most popular gossip blogs, draws up to 7 million hits per day (LA Times) and in conjunction with other well known sites such as TMZ, Lainey Gossip, What Would Tyler Durden Do, Dlisted and The Superficial, it exerts a considerable influence on the way that celebrities are mediated in contemporary media culture. Such blogs report the scandalous, glamorous and everyday behaviors of celebrities at such a frenetic pace that traditional celebrity gossip delivery mechanisms are struggling to compete. Furthermore, gossip bloggers have the power to undermine the often carefully crafted image that the entertainment industry works tirelessly to cultivate and maintain. Sean Redmond asserts that "The everywhere of fame has the potential to offer new and liberating interactions and engagements for all those who are "made up" in fame, or for all those who regularly consume its stars, celebrities and personalities." (Redmond, 27) Gossip bloggers are helping to redefine this concept of the "everywhere of fame" whereby the intimate interactions between the blogger and audience can alter the public circulation of a celebrity. [2] Blogs encourage a cynical awareness of the production of celebrity culture and encourage us to question the mechanisms through which we are positioned as consumers. Yet this questioning has its limits. In order to understand this more fully, it is necessary to examine the cultural function of the gossip blog and its use of the "Bitch" as narrator--especially as this relates to the mediation of performative markers of femininity within a post-feminist context. In particular, I want to ask how a recent shift to more malicious or "Bitchy" discussion of female celebrities, as well as the heightened profile of the female "train-wreck" celebrity, has been propelled by the rising popularity of gossip blogging. Indeed, what is particularly crucial here is how the female celebrity, which arguably represents versions of the "ideal" female body in the public sphere, can be understood within a Western neoliberal emphasis on individualism. Furthermore, although there has been a burgeoning collection of scholarship on both the tabloidization of news (Gamson, Biressi and Nunn), as well as the concept of contemporary celebrity culture (Cashmore, Rojek, Holmes, Turner), little attention has been paid to how gender is configured (and reconfigured) within this climate. It is also clear that gossip bloggers--Perez Hilton in particular--are pertinent examples of how celebrity culture is no longer considered as "cheap fodder" for the masses. As Jo Littler suggests; Previously, for professional middle-class taste-makers, engaging with the gossip and tittle-tattle around celebrity culture was positioned as downmarket, flashy, sensationalist and trashy: as 'common'. Now, to know about it is important, even if this is accompanied by a vestigial sense of distance through irony (Littler, 8). Gossip blogs plug this gap neatly, representing a seemingly "democratic culture" in which audiences interact with celebrity images in multiple and diverse ways." (Fairclough, 2008) Read More