Page 168 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

152 Audience, Performance, and Celebrity

to promote advertised commercial enterprises of various kinds that have
only a tangential connection to the celebrity. The purpose of the transac-

tion is not knowledge but profit for the owners of the media in question
and the enterprises that advertise in them.
Celebrity may increasingly be a business in a hyper - capitalized world,
but, however much “ stars ” may be produced or manufactured in the con-
temporary era to sell products or to simply sell news about the individual
celebrity, the celebrity cultural system would not work if the audience did
not play along by investing interest and emotion in their favorite celebri-
ties. Celebrity is to a large degree democratic; the audience must be seri-
ously interested in the celebrity for that person to be a celebrity in the fi rst
place. There must be some reason for the audience ’ s attention, interest,
and attachment. That cannot be created by marketing alone, although
magazines work diligently to maintain lapsed celebrities such as Jennifer
Aniston in public view, stoking interest in people who would pass from
view and be forgotten were it not for celebrity marketing.
My experience with celebrity bears out the idea that celebrities are fi rst
and foremost matters of personal identity and identification rather than

marketing. My first contact with celebrity came in the late 1950s in Ireland.

My older brother Don became heavily invested in rock ‘ n ’ roll and in the
“ greaser ” look – hair peaked and combed back and laced with oil. Few in
our town owned television sets, and our only access to the wider world of
entertainment and celebrity was the radio. With the radio came rock music,

then becoming increasingly popular. Don identified with Elvis Presley and
other similar male singing icons of rock. He kept a photo album into which
he put cut - out images of his favorite stars clipped from entertainment
magazines. When we came to the United States, this behavior continued,
and he continued to dress the part of a young hoodlum modeled on mid -
1950s Elvis. What was interesting was that he was a quite sensitive human
being with a strong creative and artistic side. In part, the music appealed
to that dimension of his personality; such music was creative and open to

endless modifications of a simple set of elementary musical, lyrical, and
emotional axioms. But he also clearly liked the image of strength the rock
greaser look gave him. By identifying with it and by dressing the part, he
overcame some of the vulnerability, no doubt, that came with his artistic
sensitivity. He looked and could act tough, even if that was not his natural
disposition.
There were quite profound temperamental and social reasons for Don ’ s
attachment to Elvis, but he would never have even known of Elvis if it were