Page 170 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

154 Audience, Performance, and Celebrity

real - world lives are imbued with imagination and fantasy of the kind that

one finds in celebrity culture. It should not be surprising then that many
people invite celebrities into their imaginary worlds and keep track of them
as they might a friend. They also of course take from those imaginary
relationships similar emotional gains, feelings of companionship and inter-
est in another ’ s life, and even feelings of concern.
The surfaces and purposes of those imaginary encounters with celebri-
ties are multiple, perhaps as multiple as the types of human personality
and the flavors of social ideology. Affect can be quite positive, as in fan

adoration of rock stars, but it can also be negative, as when a fan stalks and
kills a celebrity like John Lennon with whom he has become obsessed. The
range of emotions recalls basic human forms of relating, and celebrity
attachment is no doubt built on primary emotional attachments of the
kind that characterize human life in general. Those range from over -
invested obsession to rage against a hated object that one feels is a threat
or a disappointment in regard to one ’ s needs. The ability, even the need,
to attach to others seems an essential part of our psychological constitu-
tion. We begin attached to another ’ s body, then as we grow we become
attached to other family members, then to our friends and lovers. We
become human through our attachments; our selfi sh core becomes social,
mediated, civil. Celebrity attachment is thus an iteration or version of
something essentially human about all of us. And because human emo-
tional experience is far from singular, fan attachments to celebrities prob-
ably differentiate along a fairly broad range.
Some seek the stability and strength that many seek in parents. One way
of understanding conservative political movements such as Nazism is to
think of them as operating in the same way as celebrity attachments of a
quite primitive atavistic kind – a longing for power and control that one
lacks in oneself and a channel for negative affect against others who are
thought of as responsible for one ’ s sense of powerlessness. Others seek
an intimacy and sense of emotional attachment that may be lacking in
their lives.
That adolescents are prone to celebrity attachment suggests that that
vulnerable stage of life may be a time when those with an unstable self seek
external stabilizers. In adolescence, one is uncertain about how one ’ s new

self appears in the eyes of others, how one ’ s body fits with the ideal images
prevalent in most modern cultures that are highly commercialized, and
whether or not one will succeed both interpersonally and professionally in
life. Adolescent fans of movie stars report finding a compensatory ideal in