Celebrity Culture

Celebrity, News and the Media – Critical Engagement

In Celebrity studies, 1:1, pp.11-20, what are Turner’s key ideas on the state of celebrity studies and other approaches? What research methods might these approaches suggest to you?

Graeme Turner (2010), states that over the last ten years there has been an increasing interest in the analysis of celebrity, celebrities and celebrity culture. The phenomenon of celebrity studies has created a ‘bandwagon effect’ proving it most popular amongst humanities and social sciences. From this psychologists have stressed their concerns for the rise of what they call ‘Celebrity worship syndrome’; an obsessive-addictive disorder in which an individual becomes overly involved with the details of a celebrity’s personal life. This deems CWS as a clinical condition and as a means for explaining celebrity culture. However, Turner believes that the analysis of celebrity, celebrities and celebrity culture is best suited for those with a genuine interest in the topic, stating that ‘the heartland of celebrity studies remains within media and cultural studies where academics already interested in popular culture and representation have readily applied themselves to the discussion of particular celebrities as texts’. (Turner, 2010: 12) Moreover with regards to celebrity studies so far, Turner explains that there is a lack of variation within academic writing and research on celebrities; as most tend to cross over the same texts. Turner does not discredit these works, as they compile with the first two categories of the four ways in which we can define and approach celebrity in aid to our understanding of the function and significance of celebrity. By examining celebrity as a genre of representation, which Turner (2010: 13), says ‘provides us with a semiotically rich body of texts and discourse that fuels a dynamic culture of consumption’. Whilst also exploring the ‘discursive effect’ which focuses on the negative aspects of the process...