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6

The culture of celebrity

Introduction
The celebrity in the distinctive modern sense could not have
existed in any earlier age, or in America before the Graphic
Revolution. The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-
knownness … He is the human pseudo-event.
(Boorstin [1961] 1992 : 57; original emphasis)
Celebrities function in consumer culture as a connecting fiber
between the materiality of production and culturally contextu-
alized meaning of consumption and its relation to collective
identity. The celebrity then, is a commodity that possesses in its
humanness and familiarity an affective link in consumer culture
to the meaning that is bestowed on consumer objects by
groups.
(Marshall 1997: 245)
As Boorstin points out above, the modern celebrity is well known for
being well known (and, as we shall soon see in relation to Reality
TV, such a status is often gained irrespective of any significant
talent). Replacing traditional aura and charisma, fame now circulates
in a self-justifying fashion. This chapter demonstrates the complex
cultural alignment between this form of fame and commodity
culture in general. It builds upon Part 1’s detailed treatment of the
links that exist between media technologies and the culture industry
– what Marshall refers to above as ‘a connecting fiber’. An under-
acknowledged aspect of celebrity within cultural populist accounts is
this ideological role by which it provides a human face for commod-
ity values. The celebrity’s role as a friendly personification of the
commodity process is highly significant because of the non-
threatening manner with which it allows critical analysis of the
commodity system’s malign consequences to be voiced – one sus-
pects that if the honorary Knights of the Realm, Bono and Bob
Geldof did not exist, capitalism would need to create them. While
the essential elements of the commodity system remain undisturbed,

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