Page 159 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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144 Now
1999). The original 1960s Woodstock pop festival was widely seen as
a defining representation of hippy counter-cultural values. A largely
spontaneous and free-form rock concert took place with volunteer
food providers and a general share-and-share-alike atmosphere. The
1990s version fully exemplified the full meaning of the music
industry. The event was corporately organized with expensive ticket
prices and a large array of band-related merchandise. It culminated
with a full-scale riot, looting, arson and the deployment of riot
police. The purported catalyst of the riot was the perceived over-
charging for fast food and bottled water. Audience empowerment in
this instance evolved from the original anti-capitalist peace-
advocating stance of the hippy ethic to a violent form of protest
whose radical action was not to object to the commodity system –
just its prices.
Rojek terms celebrities as ‘the embodiments of surplus’ (Rojek
2001: 31) and argues that they tap into: ‘the surplus material and
symbolic value that is inherent in the economic and moral frame-
works governing everyday life’ (Rojek 2001: 31). They represent
human channels for the processing of the excessive material and
symbolic capital produced within contemporary capitalism. In a form
of semiotic potlatch 5 their frequently over-the-top transgressions
against the moral codes of behaviour that constrain the rest of the
non-celebrity masses act as a lightening conductor for the discontent
of the masses that might otherwise arise. Citing the work of Morin as
support, Rojek argues that celebrity can be understood in a way that
overturns the Frankfurt School’s culture industry thesis and its
emphasis upon the deliberate manipulation of celebrities as com-
modities by capitalists. Instead, the public is said to be attracted to
celebrities because they represent: ‘the antithesis of a generalized
psychological lack in ourselves’ (Rojek 2001: 35). If this assertion is
true, critical theory would suggest that this does not so much
overturn the culture industry thesis, as reinforce its emphasis upon
the escapist element of the masses’ consumption of the mere images
of otherwise unobtainable personal freedom and power not present
in their everyday lives. Identification with the celebrity becomes a
substitute for correcting the ‘psychological lack’ for which it is used
as a temporary solution. Even for those directly enjoying fame: ‘The
agency of the celebrity is more often reduced to a privatized,
psychologized representation of activity and transformation – it
rarely moves into a clear social movement’ (Marshall 1997: 244). The
celebrity-fixated nature of such celebrity-based initiatives as Live Aid
and Live 8, accounts well for the ‘privatized, pyschologized represen-
tation of activity and transformation’ that prevents the effective
reform of ongoing geopolitical structural sources of inequality – an

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