Billy couldn't make the lecture so I stepped in to cover the session using his notes (these). There's a video playlist attached at: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRCHqijqFjGvNuJ9ALGdaHOeeiLi6SII8

1. Billy Proctor
billyproctor@hotmail.co.uk
Rob Jewitt
robert.jewitt@sunderland.ac.uk
When Will I Be Famous?
Cultures of Celebrity in Reality TV
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2. Guess Who?
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3. Guess Who 2?
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4. Celebrification
 I want to be a star. I want to be adored. I
want to see and hear the screams of my
fans and the roar of an ecstatic applause.
I want my name in neon lights and my
handprints on the Hollywood Boulevard. I
want money. I want lots of money. I want
a heavenly mansion in Beverley Hills and a
string of servants to pay my bills. I want
wealth. I want to land a helicopter on my
luscious lawn. I want sex. I want drug and
alcohol excess. I want a size 8 supermodel
in my heart-shaped swimming pool. Give
me luxury leather.
 Sean Redmond in Holmes & Jermyn, 2006: p.1
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5. Starsuckers (2009, UK, C. Aitkens)
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6. Celebrification
 „The desire for fame, stardom or
celebrification stems from a need
to be wanted in a society where
being famous appears to offer
enormous material, economic,
social and psychic rewards...
 Su Holmes & Deborah Jermyn, 2006:
p.2-3
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7. Celebrification
 If you are not famous then you exist at the
periphery of the power networks that circulate
in and through the popular media. If you are
not famous you help make up the legions of
fans that celebrate the famous. If you are not
famous you become part of deifying crowd
who help co-produce (along with the popular
media) the overriding impression that stars and
celebrities are indeed at the centre of things. To
be famous is to be famous and that‟s all that
matters
 Su Holmes & Deborah Jermyn, 2006: p.2-3
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8. What is celebrity?
 „First, commentary in the popular media...tends to
regard the modern celebrity as a symptom of a worrying
cultural shift: towards a culture that privileges the
momentary, the visual and the sensational over the
enduring, the written, and the rational.
 Second, those who consume and invest in celebrity
tend to describe it as an innate or „natural‟ quality ...
[here] the defining qualities of the celebrity are both
natural and magical ...
 Third, and in striking contrast to this, the academic
literature ... has tended to focus on celebrity as the
product of a number of cultural and economic
processes
 Turner, 2004: 4
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9. History
 „there was no such thing as celebrity
prior to the 20th Century‟
 Richard Schickel, 2000: 23 (cited in Turner,
2004)
 „fame and celebrity have co-existed
for centuries‟
 Barry, 2008: 252
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10. The First Celebrity?
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11. Burke and Hare
 „these notorious criminals
were perhaps the first true
celebrities, their reputation
disseminated by the popular
media rather than poets and
historians‟
 Kornmeier in Barry, 2008: 253.
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12. Dickens and Byron
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13. „The famous non-famous‟
 „Television is now full of these
walking, talking tautologies – figures
merely famous for being famous –
and in spite of their apparent lack of
real training, talent, wisdom or
humility, the medium seems only too
pleased to continue feeding their
craving for the camera‟
 McCann, 2002 cited in Holmes, 2004: 111
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14. Frankie Cocozza
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15. Frankie Cocozza
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16. Common people
 „Ordinariness has always occupied a place
among the repertoire of celebrity discourses
... they have always been discovered,
suddenly extracted from their everyday lives
and processed for stardom; both the film
and the music industry have incorporated
such processes into their cultural mythologies
as well as their industrial practice. In recent
times, however, the use of this practice has
grown dramatically‟.
 Turner, 2004: p12
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17. Famous as ordinary?
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18. Claire: Slave to Food
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19. Dialectic
ordinary famous
ordinary famous
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20. Peter Bazalgette
(Endemol, RTS, Dept M.C.S.)
 „The lament today, from reality TV‟s critics, is why
all these awful ordinary people are allowed on
television. Their only distinction, apparently, is
their desire to show off...the only way they would
have got on TV in the old days would have been
wedged into some convenient sociological
pigeon-hole by the likes of This Week or World in
Action. Reality TV is an argument in favour of
more diverse programming and access to the
airwaves for a more diverse spread of people‟.
 Huw Wheldon Address, 2001
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21. Capitalism/ Neoliberalism
 Capitalism requires consumers to develop
abstract desire for commodities ...
Celebrity culture is therefore partly the
expression of a cultural axis organized
around abstract desire. It is an essential
tool of commodification since it embodies
desire. In particular, it provides consumers
with compelling standards of emulation
 Rojek, 2001: 187
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22. 22

23. 23

24. Jade Goody
 Big Brother 2002: Fourth Place
 2003: Channel 4‟s 100 Worst Britons. Fourth Place.
 2007: Celebrity Big Brother –Race Row
 2008: Diagnosed with cancer live on Indian Big Brother,
Big Boss.
 2009: Succumbs to cervical cancer
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY-CByHw7KA
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25. Jade‟s CV
 Big Brother 2003  You Can‟t Fire Me I‟m Famous
 Celebrity Big Brother 2007  Living with Jade
 Jade‟s Salon  Jade‟s Progress
 Just Jade  Jade‟s Bride to be
 Stars in Their Eyes (contestant)  Jade‟s Wedding
 The Weakest Link (contestant)  Jade: With Love
 The Friday Night Project (presenter)  Jade; As Seen on TV
 Jade‟s PA  Jade: One Year Later (tribute show)
 Jade‟s Shape Challenge  Ultimate Big Brother- The Final (15 Minute
Tribute)
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26. Jade
 Digital Spy: Jade Goody voted the „ultimate reality star‟.
 Sir Michael Parkinson: Jade has become property of the
media "to be manipulated and exploited till the day she
died". He claimed she represented "all that is paltry and
wretched about Britain”.
 More tributes than Michael Jackson.
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27. Jade‟s Legacy
“Jade's story has raised awareness of
cervical cancer which has led to
hundreds of thousands of people
contacting Cancer Research UK for
information on the disease as the
number of hits to our website,
CancerHelp.org shows. Her legacy will
be to help save lives”
 (Spokesman for Cancer Research).
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28. Jade‟s Legacy
 “This is a tremendous fillip for the NHS
screening programme. Jade Goody had a
particular impact on the women the NHS
struggles to reach - the young and the less
well educated. The challenge for public
health doctors now is to ensure that this rise
is sustained, so that Jade has a long-lasting
legacy”
 Thomas Moore, health correspondent for
Sky News.
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29. Jade and the media…
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30. Further Reading
 Barry, Elizabeth (2008) „Celebrity, Cultural Production & Public Life‟,
International Journal of Cultural Studies, 11(3), p.251-258.
 Holmes, Su and Redmond, Sean (2006)(eds.)Framing Celebrity:
New Directions in Celebrity Culture. London: Routledge.
 Holmes, Su & Jermyn, Deborah (2004) (eds.) Understanding Reality
Television, London: Routledge
 Rojek, Chris (2001) Celebrity. London: Reaktion.
 Schickel, Richard (2000) Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity.
New York: Doubleday.
 Turner, Graham (2004) Understanding Celebrity. London: Sage.
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