Page 156 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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The culture of celebrity 141
Such is the pace and breadth of celebrity’s powerful incursion into
popular culture that Rojek uses the term celetoid to describe an
extreme form of attributed celebrity. Compared to conventional
celebrities, celetoids assume even more temporary and manufactured
forms. Their rise to fame is based upon contingent factors surround-
ing the entertainment industry rather than any innate talent and
when those contingent factors lose their short-term salience, the
original lack of talent hastens an inevitable decline into obscurity.
The celetoid is a particularly useful concept to explain the generally
short-lived and eminently disposable nature of the celebrities pro-
duced by the various genres of Reality TV.

The celeactor

The celeactor is a fictional character who is either momentarily
ubiquitous or becomes an institutionalized feature of popular
culture.
(Rojek 2001: 23)

A sub-category of the celetoid is the celeactor. Its fictional status does
not prevent it having a large media impact as illustrated by the
success of such virtual stars as Lara Croft and the simulated band
Gorillaz. Rojek uses the ‘deaths’ of two celeactors from British
television, Inspector Morse and Victor Meldrew to illustrate the
phenomenon as a media institution. The deaths became national
media events despite their fictional status. The institutional nature of
Victor Meldrew was underlined by the 45-minute obituary pro-
gramme that preceded his television death – an honour Rojek points
out that is normally reserved for members of the Royal Family. The
blurring of the mediascape and the ‘real world’ implied by this
prominent status given to mere celeactors is further highlighted by
the death, subsequent to the publication of Rojek’s book of the
real-life actor, John Thaw, who played Inspector Morse. This event
also received national media attention, although ironically, not as
much as for the television character.

Celebrity and the co-optation of the masses

They are allowed to express themselves quite individually and
idiosyncratically while the rest of the members of the popula-
tion are constructed as demographic aggregates.
(Marshall 1997: ix)
Max Weber’s account of the historical development of modern
society describes the way in which charisma is expunged from society
through the increased application of rationalized, bureaucratic

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