The Fame to Please: The Normalisation of Celebrities

Abstract

A reiterated statement following Michael Jackson’s cardiac arrest last year was that mega stardom, in western culture, had come to an end. Indeed, while fame and stardom apparently remain desirable currencies in our society, the paradigms which determine success and failure have visibly changed. On the one hand the proliferation of a public exposure of “ordinary people” has undermined the notion of exceptionality as being necessary for fame. On the other hand, while pop culture has always contributed to the public negotiation of norms and values, the current manifestations of judge and jury through different media turn celebrities into detainees and their monitoring into a panoptical affair. As public figures, who crave the spotlight, they nowadays have to accept the ongoing documentation of their doings, thereby ceaselessly supplying images for a mediarena, in which their on- and offstage conduct, especially in relation to sex, gender and sexuality is discussed and judged.