Celebrities are a cornerstone of the media industry, and one of the main reasons for this is due to the existence of fandoms congregating around them. A leader cannot lead if no one will follow him, and so too does a celebrity have no merit unless fans are receptive to them and let them ascend into stardom.
At the base level a celebrity is understood to be someone of constant and significant prominence within the public media sphere. Manufactured and sold by industries and organisations, the celebrity commodity is a product borne to the early days of commercialism. Through every facet of their public lives that seem to radiate a golden glamour, they are pitched to audiences as an embodiment of the capitalist American dream, a vision of the good life. In this way the celebrity acts as a door through which the layman can temporarily escape the mundane hustle of their own life and faintly taste the pleasures of the fantastical lifestyles they are purported to lead.
Because of this, a celebrity also functions as a currency that is invested into product marketing campaigns in order to lend an air of trustworthiness to them. I think that in a job society where people can often feel like a disembodied cog within the industrial machine, people want to be invested in these stars because they want to fantasize that it could happen to them too.
Although in today’s mediascape you have to wonder whether the definition of ‘celebrity’ is still as clear as it used to be. Traditional media saw celebrity attributed primarily to humans of sufficient status, but as technology has increasingly melded with reality over the past two decades the distinction between the real and the digital isn’t so clear-cut anymore. One such example is the digital idol Hatsune Miku who, among other vocaloids, does in fact perform live concerts in reality through holograms projected onto a glass screen, and has been doing so since at least 2010. If a celebrity is to be defined as a personality within the media industry that has the worship of his fans, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that a celebrity is decided by its fandom regardless of its form or even species.
Fandom then, is a kind of neo-tribe wherein people of similar interests band together as a community to share in their collective passion for the object of its focus. It is a culture that congregates to engage in heated discussion surrounding all facets of their chosen topic. A fandom is not just something that blindly follows its prophet, but that dances in an active state of flux. It is not a static being that is full of unconditional support, but something that dynamically praises and criticises its namesake in the pursuit of quality . Fandom by nature is not afraid to dish out tough love in order to receive the best product possible.
Celebrities are only given relevance by their fandoms. If a film star is unpopular no one will watch him, if a musician fails to reach the hearts of his audience then no one will listen to him. If celebrities are something that is being sold to the audience, then they have no value if they audience won’t buy them. This also rings true in the world of new media, best exemplified through Youtube. Youtube is a culture of independent micro-celebrities that are entirely dependent on the support of their fandom to continue their career. At the very least traditional celebrities still have million-dollar corporations backing them through aggressive advertising campaigns, but for content creators in the fast-paced world of the internet all it can take is a handful of uninspired videos or a single period of creator’s block to be swept away as though you never even existed. A celebrity is a champion within the public view, so if the public decides they no longer want to view them then they’re out of luck.
And this is illustrated more than ever in the post-digital revolution paradigm. Through the wired world fandoms are no longer inhibited by tactile limitations such as physical location, they can meet instantaneously in a realm without border through a veil of anonymity. Utilising forum sites such as Reddit or Facebook a personalised hub for their passion can be established, open to whomever desires to join it. Such is the nature of a participatory culture like the internet. There is no longer as tangible a border between the two parties as there used to be, celebrities (or rather their PR representatives) are now readily accessible on Twitter, and it is arguably easier than ever to become famous as an online creative. Furthermore, operational transparency is more important now than ever, with fans being more consciously aware of how the content produced for them was actually made. In the past industries would just stay silent and let controversies blow over, but in the present that is something which would backfire. Instead, users take a more active stance and expect explanations whenever things such as delays, cancellations or scandals occur. And because of this the fandom holds an even larger stake in the ability to be a celebrity than they previously did.
References
Dyer, R 2007, ‘Heavenly Bodies’, in S Holmes & S Redmond (eds), Stardom and Celebrity : A Reader, SAGE Publications Ltd, Los Angeles, p.85
Godzilla Snickers Chocolate Bar TV Commercial Ad 2015, Youtube, Reggie Plata, 25 November, retrieved 18 April 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPcOJDEq73w>
Gray, J, Sandvoss, C, & Harrington, CL 2017, Fandom : identities and communities in a mediated world, New York University Press, New York, p.8
Hatsune Miku – Concert “World is Mine” 2011, Youtube, 4everdrum, 30 September, retrieved 14 April 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhYaX01NOfA>
Jenkins, H 2013, Textual poachers : television fans and participatory culture, Routledge, New York, p.48
Page, R 2012 ‘The linguistics of self-branding and micro-celebrity in Twitter: The role of hashtags’, DISCOURSE & COMMUNICATION, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 181-20.
Williamson, M 2016, Celebrity : capitalism and the making of fame, Cambridge, UK, p.2-3
Creative Commons
Acid Jazz Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
EXEGESIS
For this video, it was my aim to somewhat confront the idea of ‘fandoms flocking to celebrities’ and argue that actually celebrities have to flock to fandoms; that the true power dynamic in the celebrity-fandom relationship leans in favour of the fans.
The initial motivation for this was largely coming from my own experiences engaging with online fan communities and web 2.0 personalities (ie micro-celebrities). If you look at this environment I don’t think it takes long to see that an online content creator is only held up by the will of his subscribers, and I believe that this can then be extrapolated one step further to say that this is also the case for stars in the realm of traditional media – indeed that it is just a fundamental component of celebrity in general.
In the pursuit of scholarly research I had two main areas to focus on, the first being fandom and the second being how celebrities arise.
Obviously just in our daily life engaging with popular culture and the people around us, we naturally come across this idea of fandom and learn what it entails, so I was looking for a description that went deeper than just something as simple as ‘a fandom is a group of fans’. For the core concept of this component I read a few sources but ultimately settled on the reading by Gray, Sandvoss & Harrington that describes fandom as being somewhat of a living beast that engages in a constant push-and-pull with its namesake rather than giving it unconditional love (2017). This was integral to my position because it paints the image that a fandom is not just a blank slate dyed in its celebrity’s colour, but something that has tangibly sunk its teeth into the celebrity.
My reading into the second topic can most succinctly be summarised with a quote by Dyer who says “Images have to be made.” (2007). Although it is indeed true that a child can be born into ascribed fame, and that the effort required to become an achieved celebrity is nothing to scoff at, they do not become famous through an entirely independent effort. Without the other party watching them, would they really be considered famous? Ultimately, celebrities are a product in the exchange between the media corporation and the individual receiver. And between these two it is my belief that the individual that has to choose to buy the celebrity being sold to him carries more influence.
While the ideas of celebrity and fandom are inextricably linked, the readings I sought out weren’t that way, instead generally being separated into categories of one or the other. Being informed by these and then putting this information together myself then leads to the understanding that stars are a commodity produced by the media industry, and that what ultimately decides their fate is the will of the market.
Looking at the creative side then, videos are an audio-visual format which arguably provide more avenues to express a point than plain text, and I tried to capitalise on that through drawings. There were unavoidable instances where I obviously had to use the Hatsune Miku and Godzilla footage, but I personally like to try and create as much of the assets by myself whenever it’s viable, since that way I feel I can impart at least a little of my own self into the visual side of what I produce rather than just the audio narration.
As for whether there was ever going to be enough room to discuss this thesis adequately in a 5 minute video is up for debate. One of the main strengths of Youtube as a free participatory culture is that there are no enforced restrictions on the length of a video or its production cycle (although it would be argued the promotion algorithms do favour a certain schedule). So in that sense I feel like I was limited in what I could really produce based on the time limit and deadline, compared to if this had been done as a free-form passion project. In a perfect world I would have had the opportunity to talk at length about the deeper politics of fandom as a culture of loneliness that gossips, creates and slanders together; as an entity that tries to create quantifiable, recognisable ripples within the celebrity’s public actions as a way for them to mentally break down the producer-consumer border between them into something they deludedly associate to be more akin to friendship. But for this video I could pretty much only focus on what is essentially just one intro paragraph of a much larger essay surrounding the power dynamics in the relationship between a celebrity and their fandom.
References
Dyer, R 2007, ‘Heavenly Bodies’, in S Holmes & S Redmond (eds), Stardom and Celebrity : A Reader, SAGE Publications Ltd, Los Angeles, p.85
Gray, J, Sandvoss, C, & Harrington, CL 2017, Fandom : identities and communities in a mediated world, New York University Press, New York, p.8
SCRAMBLODAN 