Page 172 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

156 Audience, Performance, and Celebrity

maintaining a sense of one ’ s own worth and virtue as someone who plays
by the rules, accepts the self - restraints that economic inequality imposes
on one, and has no tolerance especially for cheaters who seem to feel they
can get along without the hard work and rigid self - discipline that are, in
this worldview, everyone ’ s inheritance in life. Such moralism restores to
one a sense of value and worth that one ’ s allocation to the lower rungs of
economic life deprives one of. It is this psychology and this social group
that are played to by right - wing celebrity culture in Rupert Murdoch ’ s
tabloids such as the Daily Mail in Britain and Daily News in New York that
assess public persona according to how they conform to a rigidly moral
worldview, while nevertheless stoking prurience through mildly porno-
graphic imagery. The mix of desire - inspiring visual images of women and
anger against them for their independence and inaccessibility is an under-
standable feature of a culture in which women, faced with an economically
unequal world, must choose mates often on the basis of economic success.
What this means, however, is that female celebrities are especially prone to
angry gossip such as the following from ShowBizSpy: “ Britney Spears is

worried that her ‘ comeback ’ tour will flop. She ’ s finally got a good head
1
on her shoulders, hasn ’ t she? ” And this from Murdoch ’ s Daily News is
more typical of the vituperative gossip women generate in conservative
celebrity culture: “ Aniston was in Germany promoting her sad little dog
movie, Marley & Me , with her sad - sack costar Owen Wilson, doing sad
things like eating dog biscuits for the shrieking delight of strangely - dressed
Europeans. Jen then volunteered to get down on all fours and eat poop if
it meant that everyone would love her again, but the German people –
2
always kind, always understanding – put her to sleep instead. ” Only for

parochial American conservatives would Europeans be “ strangely dressed ”
and a woman be unacceptable for being as strong and intelligent as Aniston
obviously is. The purpose of celebrity gossip in this instance is to reinforce
a narrow worldview based on pre – civil rights prejudices and antique ideo-
logical assumptions.
Britney Spears is an example of a female celebrity who was successful
because of her talent but whose career as a celebrity has assumed a life of
its own apart entirely from that talent. Spears ’ success was due entirely to
her training in a performing arts school and to her willingness to undergo
the usual apprenticeship that artists have to undertake. Her 1998 single
“ Baby One More Time ” was a number - one song in America and was
followed by other successful recordings such as “ Toxic ” and by successful