Celebrity and Fame

As an “icon” in mainstream popular culture, Lady Gaga has imbued a new standard of super stardom as a performance artist and transformative fashionista in today’s generation and thus challenged orthodoxy. Her interpretation and expression of Christianity, in particular, places the iconic goddess under the critical spotlight of the religious community. Born a Roman Catholic, Lady Gaga experienced a series of life-changing events that has brought her to integrate risky biblical references into her lyrics. Her music is only one perspective, however, upon which this can be analyzed: her fashion, often unpredictable yet impressive, is equally influenced by her religious roots and ideas. The art of Lady Gaga’s music and fashion brings together new meaning both insightful and controversial to the Christian body, which elicits a response to examine and criticize the superstar’s interpretive messages. As a result, subjective interpretations of those references lie at the heart of Christian argument as well as Lady Gaga’s.

Instafame is a pioneering study of the impact of social media and digital culture on graffiti and street art. Using 23 million pieces of publicly available data from Instagram, it paints a picture of the global networks of attention and taste that underpin contemporary graffiti and street art.

The article is based on research results from the project 'Celebrities in the Polish media and social space. Interdisciplinary study'. The author focuses on celebrity mothers and „performative parenting” (broadcasting every aspact of parenting experiences such as pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood on social media). It also indicates how celebrities are represented as mothers in and by the popular media.

Amongst the vast human population lies one common fear – the fear of the unknown. As a result, most progressions made by humans are in pursuit of a source of explanation. In earlier days a cosmological presence was created to soften the blow of the existential reality that humanity cannot bear to face. Throughout the centuries, religions have been formed based on ancient myths and rituals, creating idols, gods, and an overall higher cosmos – all of which seem unreachable but somehow comfort humans by diminishing their existential fear. Although in modern times science has paved the way towards the future, casting a shadow over any cosmological accounts, I found that music has managed to keep these mythological roots. I would argue that the rise of celebrity culture within the world of music is not something new, but rather a modern reinterpretation of previous beliefs and ritualistic practises: the shaman and their role within society; mythic frameworks that contemporary celebrity figures can be placed within e.g. the Dying God, sacrifice and resurrection, worshipping self-made (or society-made) idols etc. By analysing old interpretations of celebrity function within myth and rituals of the past and cross-referencing them with the reinterpretations of celebrity within music, I have found certain ties that show myth has not been completely forgotten. I delve into the world of celebrity culture, concentrating on superstar Taylor Swift and her constant reinventions, placing her within certain mythological frameworks of the past.

By writing this dissertation, I hope to form a stronger tie between modern celebrity culture and the present “belief system”, that being any major world religion. Focusing on the musical side of celebrity culture allows me to cross-reference celebrity functions now and compare them to their functions of the past within a cosmological context.

Significant changes to societies and the jettisoning of social rights are limiting access to conventional citizenship and fueling a new criterion by which a substantive ‘citizenship’ may now be claimed. Specifically, fame, fortune and a kind of martyrdom are, de facto, the new ways in which an individualistic approach is used to access citizenship, initiating a two-tiered system of inclusion. This article uses a Canadian context to examine the relevance of Marshall's concept of citizenship. The argument will follow in four parts. First, I review Marshall's construct of social rights and take up some of the ‘internal’ critiques of its limits. Second, I examine the gendered limits of social citizenship claims. Third, I explore what amounts to an ‘external’ critique of Marshall, i.e. thinkers like Beck who argue that the debate has moved on from how to do ‘social rights’ to an attack on the very notion of (social) rights. Finally, I propose what a citizenship without social rights concretely amounts to in the modern world.

La polémica que surgió a partir de 1614 en torno a la oscuridad poética de los grandes poemas de Luis de Góngora ―la "Fábula de Polifemo" y las "Soledades"― no fue una disputa circunscrita sólo a ámbitos eruditos. Desde los métodos por los que se difundieron estos poemas, pasando por los intercambios polémicos entre apologistas y detractores, hasta llegar a la presencia pública que este debate llegó a presentar, la disputa en torno a la oscuridad responde a unas dinámicas modernas de difusión, presencia pública y fama literarias. En este artículo examino los principales procesos de circulación de la polémica y las características generales de estas prácticas culturales estructuradas en torno a la búsqueda de una celebridad poética.

In this paper, we present a thematic analysis of broadcast and print media representations of YouTube celebrity. Youth-oriented media have capitalised on the phenomenon, placing vloggers alongside actors and pop stars. However, in much adult-oriented mainstream media, YouTubers are presented as fraudulent, inauthentic, opportunist and talentless, making money from doing nothing. Key themes recur in coverage, including YouTubers' presumed lack of talent and expertise, the alleged dangers they present and the argument that they are not 'really famous'. YouTubers' claims to fame are thus simultaneously legitimised by giving them coverage and delegitimised within said coverage, echoing media treatment of other 'amateur' celebrities such as reality stars and citizen journalists. We argue that the response to YouTubers in more traditional media outlets demonstrates recognition of their visibility and appeal to a younger audience, whilst also signifying apprehension towards a phenomenon that potentially threatens both the existence of traditional media forms, and the influence of traditional media professionals.

This article focuses on the role of circulated affect in crowdfunded funeral campaigns, which have attracted little scholarly attention so far. This study is based on content analysis of online campaigns (N = 50) and qualitative interviews (N = 10) with campaign supporters and initiators. Its aim is to connect crowdfunded funeral campaigns to the larger digital-sharing economy. The findings of the study suggest that in order to gather sufficient funds to cover funeral costs, individuals share emotionally evocative narratives and images with their social networks and an imagined Internet audience with the expectation of attracting compassion. The study shows that political movements, media coverage, and sharing on social media platforms are integral to the success of campaigns for socially marginal individuals. The article contributes to the growing study of crowdwork and finds persistent structural inequalities in crowdfunding campaigns, thereby contesting the ethos of the digital commons.

Looking for the tracks of the memory of certain doctors in the Middle Ages, one can question a wide range of sources ; what emerges is the figure of an admired intellectual, with an international reputation, about whom cities sometimes compete ; but it appears also as a professional arising rivalries and conflicts, even critics and mockeries for failings
It is doubtless in the genre of the urban eulogy, a genre rapidly expanding in communal Italy, that the doctors reach completely in the group portrait. As a matter of fact, the memory of the medieval practitioners seems to have been more cultivated in Italy than in the other spaces and it can be easily explained. In Italy, the early development of the medical activity, associated with the creation of universities and with the formation of professional associations confered from the XIIIth century on a social and intellectual recognition to the doctors, who took sometimes also an important part to the political life of the city.
But behind the praising accounts, individual or collective, concerning the physicians, defaults or less glorious behaviors or actions can also be found in this laudatory literature, and we can wonder if they are real or the fruit of the imagination. We know how much the fama was important for the doctors: As they often say/recognize themselves, the infamia was indeed the most dreaded danger. This papers tries eventually to determine on which conditions the fama of a practitioner stops being simple fame, to become legend.

The motion picture Spring Breakers, directed by Harmony Korine, is employed to illustrate a schizoanalysis of identity politics or neoliberal multiculturalism wherein specific subject positions that have become hypostatized, as for example in race, gender, or sexual categories, are set in motion toward a tactical and processual complexification. This is accomplished, primarily, via an analysis of the semantic drift and emptiness of the refrain, the apotheosis of surfaces, the deterritorializing powers of the black hole, the phallus as artifice, and the answer in becoming-sprite coinciding with the end result, which is ultimately a paroxysmal transversality. Future directions are outlined as it relates to diagrammatizing the girls in the film with Pussy Riot, the appointment of Jonas Åkerlund as the director of Spring Breakers: The Second Coming, and the continual creation of identities as a means to outmaneuver, strategically, the forms of imprisonment instituted by molar assemblages such as capitalist multiculturalism. Following the model of Brit and Candy, the unique form, suggested by the film, that this takes is to set upon becoming-sprite: a catalytic fairy always processing toward the virtual.

Artists, or celebrities who produce art, are just as likely to rape as the normal population
(non-artists), yet they seldom have their cases taken to court and as a result are less likely to receive a conviction. Reasons as to why artists are allowed to get away with rape, or why we continue to engage in their art once their crime has been uncovered, has been almost
completely neglected throughout literature. How we perceive and discuss artists in
comparison to non-artists has also been overlooked. It has been suggested that characteristics such as physical attractiveness, social attractiveness and race play a role in why artists get away with rape. Rape empathy was also considered to be a potential factor, as empathy towards perpetrators and victims of rape is recognised as being influential in our perceptions of perpetrators. 8 Royal Holloway undergraduate students participated in this study. Their level of empathy towards artists who rape were compared with level of empathy towards non-artists, who committed a similar type of sexually motivated crime, as was done for their victims too. Additionally, participants completed questionnaires in order to uncover the reasons as to why they were willing or unwilling to engage in the artist’s and non-artist’s work. Initial results indicate no difference in levels of empathy towards artists and non-artists, or their victims, though a larger sample size may have produced more conclusive results. Race, being a fan of the artist (due to cognitive dissonance that appeared to arise in participants) and not having the case taken to court appear to be contributing factors that explain why people continue to engage in
their art and why artists tend to get away with rape.

This paper argues that Merton’s original means=goals gap theory can be used to understand the emerging relationship between deviant behavior and the acquisition of celebrity status. The intent is to illuminate how forms of deviant behavior have become adaptive responses to the structurally anomic conditions that have resulted from popular culture’s incessant emphasis on the desirability of fame and celebrity status, and the structurally limited means by which it can be legitimately achieved. Merton’s original forms of adaptation—innovation, retreatism, rebellion, and ritualism—are explored in relation to this increasingly important phenomenon.

El poeta Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer dejó Sevilla en 1854 para instalarse en Madrid, donde fallecería años después, en 1870, y donde recibió sepultura. Sus admiradores sevillanos quisieron desde muy pronto trasladar su cuerpo a Sevilla pero no lo consiguieron hasta 1913. En este artículo se citan varios documentos que explican las razones de un largo proceso.

In America, during the 1960s and '70s, there were more than twenty movie magazines circulating in any given month and, each month, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis featured on the cover of a significant percentage. She never starred in a film, but her tabloid-self featured in the movie magazines to such an extent that Variety enthusiastically hailed Jackie as 'Undisputed Top Femme In [sic] World.' 1 Jackie's very appearance in the movie magazines suggested a massive shift from their original function as an advertising vehicle for motion picture stars. Both Elizabeth Taylor (known in the magazines as 'Liz') and Jackie Kennedy were exaggerated icons, however, Liz, an actress, was selling a product – herself and her movies. Because Jackie had no movies, her life itself was turned into a drama intended for the public's entertainment. By the early-1960s, it was playing out on newsstands all across the country. Initially, she was depicted as an ideal wife and mother, and the prevailing editorial policy of the tabloids was to feature her alongside Hollywood stars who misbehaved. Elizabeth Taylor quickly became her foil and the Jackie-Liz connection would become so integrated into popular culture that in The Greek Tycoon (1978), the Hollywood treatment of Jackie's life, the lead female character was named 'Liz.' 2 Over time, the relationship grew more complex. Readers were tantalized by what Jackie withheld, and her adamant refusal to reveal herself or her private life proved fertile ground for wildly speculative assertions and implausible fantasies. In soliciting readers' help in selecting a wedding dress for Jackie's remarriage, inviting them to suggest a hairstyle, and to pass judgment upon her hem lengths, the magazines fostered the public's sense of interactivity, creating the illusion that Jackie's was a life in which America got a vote. She was the first non-film star celebrity to whom the movie magazines applied the conventions of film-star fame.

A ausência de quem tinha se autoconferido o status de monumento vivo é uma perda, não pelo passado, (num dos quais ele já vivia). O passado, quando da perda, é continuamente presentificado e trazido da memória para as práticas, das práticas convertido em novas tradições, dos convertidos para a historiografia do "futuro do pretérito".

A perda se dá pelo futuro.

Quem doravante motivará esse rito social - o funeral, precedido pelas elegias, epitáfios e hagiografias em tempo real - global?

What, if anything, is problematic about the involvement of celebrities in democratic politics? While a number of theorists have criticized celebrity involvement in politics, none so far have examined this issue using the tools of social epistemology, the study of the effects of social interactions, practices, and institutions on knowledge and belief acquisition. We will draw on these resources to investigate the issue of celebrity involvement in politics, specifically as this involvement relates to democratic theory and its implications for democratic practice. We will argue that an important and underexplored form of power, which we will call epistemic power, can explain one important way in which celebrity involvement in politics is problematic. This is because unchecked uses and unwarranted allocations of epistemic power, which celebrities tend to enjoy, threaten the legitimacy of existing democracies and raise important questions regarding core commitments of deliberative, epist...

Around the mid-2000s, the first wave of young Thai women who attained fame organically on the internet emerged when their photos and profiles were widely shared by friends and fans in web communities and discussion forums. Comprising mainly of students, these women were known as ‘net idols’ and celebrated primarily for their looks, as online conversations focused on their beauty, cosmetic and dressing skills, and overall pleasant appearance. Since then, some of these net idols have parlayed their online popularity into commercial exchanges and partnerships by advertising for clients, evolving into a commercial form of microcelebrity known as ‘influencers’ (Abidin 2016), while still others progressed into different forms of internet celebrity confined only to online fame as social capital without further tangible returns. In this chapter, we review the conceptual history of net idols and a subset of influencers known as ‘beauty bloggers’ in Thailand, drawing on observations and content analysis of net idols’ Instagram posts, beauty bloggers’ Facebook posts, conversations from selected discussion boards, and popular sentiment about these internet celebrities in tabloids and online websites. Most of the content is originally in Thai and translated by the first author.

Spectacle, Globalization, Commodification, Culture Industry...is the Art World a mix of Fame and Celebrity Culture?

We find ourselves in a situation in which “known for his well- knownness”—as Daniel Boorstin put it in the 1960s—has undeservedly devalued the merits of “fame.”

Fame and celebrity are not interchangeable: fame is a process, celebrity is a state of being. But both are defining elements of today's art world in today´s globalized high art-pop culture complex.

Les technologies d’internet ont suscité, en facilitant l’autopublication des œuvres d’amateurs, une forte démocratisation des pratiques d’expression artistique en ligne. Nous nous intéressons dans cet article aux vidéastes amateurs qui mettent en ligne leur production sur des plateformes telles que YouTube et Dailymotion. Nous analysons le sens que donnent les individus à la notoriété qu’ils construisent en ligne, et la façon dont ils convertissent (ou non) leur capital de notoriété accumulé en ligne en réputation artistique valorisable sur des marchés du travail. Ce travail est orienté par la question de savoir dans quelle mesure la pratique (souvent autodidacte) de la vidéo en ligne est une voie d’entrée alternative sur les marchés du travail artistiques, et à quels marchés elle donne accès.

This article draws on psycho-social theories of emotional labour and the sociological concept of ‘emotion work’ in order to interrogate the affective communicative performances of celebrities, their deployment of a ready language of emotion and the broader therapeutic discourses from which this language is derived. It takes as its focus the emotional work undertaken by celebrities in order to limit or repair reputations damaged by scandal and to overcome a perceived betrayal of public trust. Starting from the premise that an ‘ideology of intimacy’ has formed the conditions in which the celebrity now labours as an emotional subject in the public arena, and that social relationships are considered to be ‘authentic’ or ‘real’ mainly through their commitment to the ‘inner psychological concerns of each person’, we explore the affective demands made upon the celebrity subject in contemporary media culture to be both intimate and ‘real’. In so doing we draw attention to the range of cultural spaces in which celebrity emotion work takes place, the conventions which enable this work and the only partially articulated contract of on-going public intimacy upon which this work is predicated. The article concludes with a consideration of how the public–celebrity contract intersects with a broader cultural imperative to perform emotion in the media, evident in the expectation that public figures should convey authentic feeling and convey it convincingly, in order to manage an on-going relationship of trust with their publics and thereby sustain a successful career in the public realm.

Este artigo sintetiza os resultados de uma pesquisa mais ampla realizada sobre o tema da cultura da fama e dos processos de celebritização inerentes ao YouTube. O objetivo deste artigo em específico é o de diagnosticar os hábitos de consumo dos usuários brasileiros do site, seus interesses coletivos, gostos, os grandes temas que procuram, assistem e compartilham, e, principalmente, o que está por trás disso, elaborando assim um exame de nossa sociedade e época. Para isso, lançamos mão de dois métodos: o primeiro, uma análise quali-quantitativa dos vídeos posicionados no ranking Em Alta da plataforma, dissecando os 50 vídeos mais assistidos e compartilhados do país diariamente durante o período de um mês (entre setembro e outubro de 2017) e com isso mapeando os principais temas, categorias e formatos em evidência; o segundo, um survey on-line realizado com grupos de fãs dos youtubers Kéfera Buchmann e Whindersson Nunes entre os meses de maio e novembro de 2017. O questionário continha 29 perguntas (fechadas e abertas) que foram respondidas por um grupo amostral de 119 fãs. Com esse survey, a intenção era compreender como o espectador encara e participa do fenômeno youtuber. Os resultados obtidos apontam para uma atmosfera social que enxerga na visibilidade midiática e, mais precisamente, na fama, uma validação da existência e uma fuga da solidão, com ênfase no êxito das relações parassociais; o que remonta a dualidade comunitário-massivo explorada pelo próprio YouTube ao se equilibrar entre suas duas polaridades: a de rede social e a de indústria midiática.

Palavras-chave Cultura da fama; YouTube; Webcelebridades.

Abstract: This research synthesizes the results of a larger study about the culture of fame and the processes of celebritization inherent in YouTube. The purpose of this article in particular is to diagnose the consumption habits of Brazilian users of the website-their interests, tastes, the great themes that we seek, watch and share, and, mainly, what is behind this-thus elaborating an examination of our society and time. To do this, we used two methods: the first, a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the videos positioned in the Trending ranking of the platform, dissecting the 50 most watched and shared videos of the country daily, during a month period (between September and October 2017) and so mapping the main themes, categories and formats in vogue; the second, an online survey conducted with fan groups of the youtubers Kéfera Buchmann and Whindersson Nunes between the months of May and November 2017. The questionnaire contained 29 questions (closed and open) that were answered by a sample group of 119 fans. With this survey, the intent was to understand how the viewer see and participates in the youtuber phenomenon. The results obtained point to a social atmosphere that sees in media visibility and, more precisely, in fame, a validation of existence and an escape from solitude, with emphasis on the success of parasocial interactions; which goes back to the community-massive duality explored by

Until fairly recently it was not uncommon for political theorists to hold the view that people cannot be expected to act in accordance with the public interest without some incentive. Authors such as Marcus Tullius Cicero, John Locke, David Hume and Adam Smith, for instance, held that people often act in accordance with the public interest, but more from a concern for their honour and reputation than from a concern for the greater good. Today, most authors take a more demanding view, maintaining that people are to be just solely from a love for justice, not from a fear of losing face. In this article today’s prevailing view, which sees honour as something obsolete and archaic and not as a legitimate motive, is contrasted with the older view that honour is important for both knowing what moral is and acting on it. Subsequently, it is argued that the ethics of honour, especially in the form it took in the works of Hume and Smith, can still be of value, exactly because it is less demanding.

In my thesis project I am researching the promotion and celebrity of different Spanish actresses in the last years of the 19th century till the beginning of the sound cinema in Spain (1932), date so close to the Spanish civil war (1936-1939).

Contrary to the fifteen minutes of fame of online memes and viral videos in the volatile and competitive environment of YouTube, successful beauty gurus achieve sustained popularity, enjoy from long-lasting viewer engagement and inhabit legitimized celebrity positions. This article is based on a multi-year ethnographic examination of YouTube’s beauty community, focusing on the popular British-Chinese beauty guru Bubz, her channel Bubzbeauty, and the community of viewers formed around her content. Parting from the question of what legitimates Bubz in her influential role, I conceptualize community-specific norms that guide practices, particularly those related to self-presentation and identity-management and their implications for everyday celebrity practice. Merited fame involves certain requirements that need to be consistently demonstrated. The importance of first demonstrating expertise and effort, and then consistently following the community rules of self-presentation and engagement with brands and viewers without ‘losing your own self’ is at the heart of the values of YouTube’s beauty community.

Les occurrences dans les journaux de Robespierre, de ses amis et de ses rivaux telles que le site Retronews (BNF) permet de recenser de 1789 à 1970.
La question centrale est d'apprécier la place relative de Robespierre (aîné) dans le groupe des personnages importants de ce moment et dans la mémoire des journaux pendant les deux siècles qui suivirent.