Page 158 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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The culture of celebrity 143
culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its
products even though they see through them’ (Adorno and Hork-
heimer 1997: 167). In shows like American Idol, a good illustration of
this process is provided by the public’s emotional (and financial in
relation to the premium phone charges involved) investment in the
progress of contestants presented as talented individuals. The pre-
packaged nature of the cultural product into which such talent has
to fit, however, is reflected by the fact that a number one hit is
normally guaranteed before the eventual winner is first announced
and then typically signed up to a lucrative contract with one of the
music industry impresarios who double as judges. Rather than
causing any criticism, if anything, these manoeuvres add to the
enjoyment and significance of the event for the audience who are in
on the trick, indeed, their active involvement is necessary for the
trick to be so successful and profitable.
The irrational energies of the crowd/public to which charisma
traditionally appealed is transformed by the culture industry into the
much more easily controlled (and exploited) commodified phenom-
enon of celebrity for the pre-primed mass-media audience. Weber
talks in terms of charisma’s qualities becoming: ‘transferable, person-
ally acquirable and attachable to the incumbent of an office or an
institutional structure regardless of the persons involved’ (cited in
Marshall 1997: 21), a process which has little essential difference
with contemporary celebrity given the increased importance given to
attributed rather than achieved fame. Especially with such democra-
tized forms such as Reality TV, but to a lesser but still significant
extent with conventional celebrity, fame can now move readily from
one person to another in a systemic process largely independent of
the particular individuals involved. This is evident from a spate of
‘conveyor belt’ television formats that either ‘discover’/produce new
talent as already pointed out in relation to American Idol,orin
instances such as Reborn in the USA where past celebrities have their
careers recycled. The advent of democratized celebrity can be seen
as an example of the Frankfurt School’s concept of repressive
3
desublimation . This constitutes a return of the repressed whereby the
original rejection of sublime, ecstatic charisma reappears in the
desublimated and more easily socially controlled form of celebrity.
Marshall points out, for example, how the pop singer: ‘represents
the physicality of the affective power of the people’ (Marshall 1997:
197). In Weberian terms the potentially unruly crowd is simultane-
ously energized by the pop star’s charisma yet nevertheless still
4
channelled into consuming his/her CDs, T-shirts and so on . Per-
haps the clearest example of the practical co-optation of audiences
by pervasive commodification is provided by the 1999, 30-year
anniversary revival of the Woodstock pop festival (The Guardian

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