Page 99 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Celebr ty Worsh p and Fandom

CELEBriTy CuLTurE vErsus Fan CuLTurE
Thompson’s work reflects a shift of the pendulum from focusing on celeb-
rities (media production) to focusing on fans and audiences (media con-
sumption). Instead of concentrating on “celebrity culture,” we might instead
highlight the audience’s power in creating meaning in the consumption of pop-
ular culture. In John Fiske’s (1989a, 1989b) analogy, we could compare popular
media products to jeans—they are mass-produced commodities that for all the
standardization in their production become meaningful only through the way
they are worn, made our own, and eventually torn by consumers. Far from un-
critical worshippers of a particular celebrity, fans make “tactical” use of popu-
lar icons in ways that are empowering to themselves. Henry Jenkins’s seminal
study Textual Poachers further documents the degree to which audiences ap-
propriate media texts for their own ends. In Jenkins’s words, “I am not claiming
that there is anything particularly empowering about the texts fans embrace.
I am, however, claiming that there is something empowering about what fans
do with those texts in the process of assimilating them to the particulars of
their lives” (1992, p. 284). Crucially, rather than a bond between isolated audi-
ence members and their objects of affection, fans are often part of communities
that share readings and ways of using media products, and hence that foster the
critical rereading and appropriation of these products, as well as the creation of
fan-authored materials such as fan fiction.

desPerately seeking CeleBrity

As part of his portrayal of postwar American consumer culture as suffering from a cultural
pathology of narcissism, the historian Christopher Lasch identified the incessant need of
individuals in such conditions to exercise their individuality by striving for fame and celebrity
and thus seeking to separate themselves from the anonymous masses. The celebrity uni-
verse according to Lasch is a constant encouragement for the “common man” to identify
with extraordinary and the spectacular, making the banality of our everyday existence dif-
ficult to bear.
In this approach, the contemporary fascination with celebrity is fuelled by the inherent
focus on the self and self-fulfillment in contemporary culture. Crucially, however, such self-
centeredness does not lead to the worship or adoration of a particular celebrity, which is al-
ways an act of subordination, but to the desire to achieve celebrity oneself, lucidly illustrated
in the sheer endless supply of those seeking fame through participating in reality television
programs, casting shows such as American Idol, or television talk shows. Fans and those
striving for celebrity thus engage in opposing practices: while fans intersect themselves into
media products through the distinct meanings they create in their readings underscored by
admiration and appreciation of mediated stars and texts, celebrity seekers’ interest does not
lie with external objects (i.e., actual celebrities) but with their self and its ambition to achieve
celebrity status.