Page 160 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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The culture of celebrity 145
impasse reflected in the complaints of the celebrity campaigners
themselves at the G8 summit of June 2007 (see Blair 2007).

The culture of distraction
Celebrities are part of the culture of distraction today. Society
requires distraction so as to deflect consciousness from both the
fact of structured inequality and the meaninglessness of exist-
ence following the death of God.
(Rojek 2001: 90)
Rojek traces the way in which the narratives of celebrity frequently
involve a decline and fall, followed by renewed success to closely
mirror the major religious theme of redemption. The rise of
celebrity as a religion substitute, the celeactor and all its kitsch
implications, and the identification by the masses of celebrities as
embodiments of surplus are all made possible by the loss of
traditional aura initially identified and welcomed by Benjamin as a
socially empowering phenomenon. Like Benjamin, Rojek interprets
this loss of aura positively. The rise of celebrity is symptomatic of the
decline of more traditional, ascribed forms of power to the extent
that he claims: ‘Celebrity culture and the celetoid are the direct
descendants of the revolt against tyranny. The celeactor is a symptom
of the decline of ascribed forms of power and a greater equality in
the balance of power between social classes’ (Rojek 2001: 29).
However, the notion that celebrity draws its appeal from non-
traditional sources does not provide persuasive grounds for opti-
mism. It does not address the argument that celebrity culture merely
presents an idealized version of the empowerment of the masses. In
reality, this superficial appearance disguises the deeper and deeper
imbrication of this new form of power with another tradition, albeit
a newer one – commodity culture.
Despite arising from the masses and thereby having the potential
to act as a countervailing force to previous forms of elite power, this
argument does not move us much further than Benjamin’s previ-
ously explored hopes for the masses. The technologically enabled,
historically new quality of the mass also enables celebrity to be
produced and set squarely within the operational requirements of a
capitalist society and its particular form of elites – plus ça change, plus
c’est la même chose. For a profit, capitalist society will meet the false
needs of the masses it itself has generated but, as Marcuse (1968)
points out, needs derived from beyond the commodity realm are
marginalized by society’s one-dimensional nature. More than this,
the ‘new’ traditional elite’s ideological manipulation of the public is
at once stronger yet less explicit than previous forms of social power
and domination. The media’s exercise of power is more subtle, but
no less effective.

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