Page 227 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense
P. 227
212 Carly Machado
According to Marshall’s studies (2001), celebrity status gives structure
to meanings, crystallizes ideological positions and works to provide sense
and coherence to a culture. Being a celebrity provides distinction and con-
fers discursive power to the person: the celebrity is a voice imposed over
other voices, a voice channeled by the media systems as legitimately mean-
10
ingful (Marshall, 2006). The fame acquired by Raël through the mass
11
media, even though relative in quantitative terms, is realized as an exten-
sion of his self, a capacity to develop spatiotemporal relations that extend
beyond the self (Munn 1992), expanding its dimensions of control. At the
start of my ethnographic research, my initial “contact” with Raël was
mediated by his online image and his printed word; likewise, others inter-
ested in the movement can make contact with “Raël’s person” through
these same mediations.
Munn (1992, 116) conceives “fame,” in the Gawan case, as an extension
of a person’s immediate influence beyond the minds and actions of his or
her partners, reaching others located further away in the network. “Fame”
is therefore characterized as the potential to influence the acts of distant
third parties: “As iconic and reflexive code, fame is the virtual form of
influence” (117). Taking the relation between fame and influence as a par-
adigmatic feature of the figure of Raël allows us to pursue a deeper analysis
of the effectiveness of the link between the spread of his image through
mass communications, associated with the circulation of his person (fame),
and the amplification of his influence in creating positive and sacred val-
ues associated with his image. The virtual presence of the diffused image,
associated with its potential to influence, generates the effect needed to
attribute sacredness to the prophet’s amplified powers. Circulation of the
person, extra-bodily mobility, virtuality, and extended influence are ele-
ments held in common by mediatic and sacred effects, and as such can mix
to the point where they end up defining the same phenomenon. 12
Like the category of “fame,” the position of “celebrity” confers “other-
worldly” qualities to the sacred figure of the prophet. According to Marshall
(2001), the celebrity occupies a position without history and without great
cultural importance or prior baggage: “Celebrity draws its power from
those elements without tradition. This power, however, has a certain
liquidity, much like the mobility and exchangeability of capital” (6).
Hence, Marshall continues, the celebrity exists above the real world in the
domain of symbols that gain and lose values like merchandise on the stock
market.
While at first sight the reports produced by the RVP team seem to be
targeted toward the outside public, the biggest effect of these images is to
feed the internal imaginary of the movement’s members who, through
what they see and how they see, legitimate Raël’s status as a prophet. The