tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/fame-25684/articlesFame – The Conversation2023-10-24T15:45:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2158292023-10-24T15:45:49Z2023-10-24T15:45:49ZHow fame has changed for artists since Antiquity<p>From the end of Antiquity (5th century CE) until about 1250, image-makers were more or less anonymous craftspeople. Traditional images from the Byzantine world dominated art in this period. When it came to art, what mattered was the skilful repetition of familiar icons, a model that left little room for individual and creative expression. </p>
<p>It wasn’t until the <a href="https://archive.org/details/artofhumanism00clar">1400s that this changed</a>, when Italy came under the spell of humanism – a system of thought centred on people rather than God – leading to a burgeoning interest in the creative potential of individuals.</p>
<p>Byzantine icons make a virtue of repetition. By contrast, self-portraits celebrate unique personalities. Although there are earlier candidates, such as Jan van Eyck’s arresting <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-eyck-portrait-of-a-man-self-portrait">Portrait of a Man</a> of 1433, the earliest certain self-portrait in the western canon dates from as late as 1435: a low-relief bronze by the Renaissance polymath <a href="https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.43845.html">Leon Battista Alberti</a>. Today, artists are expected to be disruptively individual, an idea that the earliest self-portraits express. </p>
<p>The artist known as <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/el-greco">El Greco</a> encapsulates the shift from inheritor to innovator of visual forms. He was born in Candia (modern Crete) in 1541, one of the few remaining outposts of Byzantine culture following the collapse of the Empire in 1453. </p>
<p>But it was not until the 19th century that El Greco’s extraordinary and visionary talent was “discovered”. Many of his works look startlingly expressive and non-naturalistic, and for that reason they appear modern – even by today’s standards. Artists as radical as Pablo Picasso leaned on his works for inspiration, however, El Greco was <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grec/hd_grec.htm">not that famous in his lifetime</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A cityscape of Toledo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554776/original/file-20231019-19-mx7bod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554776/original/file-20231019-19-mx7bod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554776/original/file-20231019-19-mx7bod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554776/original/file-20231019-19-mx7bod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554776/original/file-20231019-19-mx7bod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554776/original/file-20231019-19-mx7bod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554776/original/file-20231019-19-mx7bod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">View of Toledo by El Greco.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Greco#/media/File:El_Greco_View_of_Toledo.jpg">The Met</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One reason for his lack of fame was that he criticised the most famous artist of his day, Michelangelo. When a new and pious pope sought views on improving what he viewed as Michelangelo’s indecent Sistine Chapel ceiling, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3333485?typeAccessWorkflow=login&saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiI4YzZlZDM4MS0zMDE3LTRhYmUtOTY0Ny0yMDQ0YWI4NTI5ZGYiLCJpbnN0aXR1dGlvbklkcyI6WyIxMTgxMTM5Mi0yMThiLTRiMjEtYTgwZS1mOGY2MmQwZjJiZDYiXX0&seq=4">El Greco suggested</a> he could repaint it “just as fine”.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3333485?typeAccessWorkflow=login&saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiI4YzZlZDM4MS0zMDE3LTRhYmUtOTY0Ny0yMDQ0YWI4NTI5ZGYiLCJpbnN0aXR1dGlvbklkcyI6WyIxMTgxMTM5Mi0yMThiLTRiMjEtYTgwZS1mOGY2MmQwZjJiZDYiXX0&seq=4">According to witnesses</a>, El Greco declared Michelangelo “a worthy man, but he never learnt how to paint”. This arrogance outraged his peers, closing doors in Italy. Ironically, El Greco’s radical late style with its distortion of the human figure, compressed space and dynamic composition, relies on synthesising Michelangelo’s achievements with his own Byzantine spiritual and spatial sense.</p>
<h2>The hidden labour of the fame game</h2>
<p>The idea of an artist being an original creator can be misleading because it overlooks the role of other people in shaping their success. The art world is a complex ecosystem where critics, journalists, collectors, curators, academics and biographers contribute to an artwork’s meaning. But most of this labour is overlooked. </p>
<p>When the viewer stands in the charismatic glow of a Van Gogh self-portrait, do they feel the presence of the artist or the labour of his sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, who devoted her life to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/magazine/jo-van-gogh-bonger.html">establishing Van Gogh’s legacy</a> as a genius? </p>
<p>Artistic fame is a social rather than an individual achievement. Gallery owners work hard to establish the cultural and financial value of the artists they represent, through careful curation and placing works in the right collections, helping to build reputation and enlarging the “story” of the individual artist. </p>
<p>Unlike El Greco or Van Gogh, very few artists are household names these days. Fame in the art world is about having currency in the right circles. As those chosen to be on show at the art fair <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/12/01/be-ultra-wary-of-the-ultra-contemporary-a-triumph-of-hot-air-over-real-value">Frieze testify</a> to, some artists achieve ultra-recognition ultra-young. Surprisingly, this can be a disaster. </p>
<p>“Ultra-contemporary” is the latest buzzword, labelling artists born since 1975. The term was forged in response to a cohort commanding trend-buckingly high prices at auction while still, in artistic terms, barely out of art school.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Everydays: The First 5000 Days by Beeple" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554778/original/file-20231019-17-zagza5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554778/original/file-20231019-17-zagza5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554778/original/file-20231019-17-zagza5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554778/original/file-20231019-17-zagza5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554778/original/file-20231019-17-zagza5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554778/original/file-20231019-17-zagza5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554778/original/file-20231019-17-zagza5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Everydays: The First 5000 Days by Beeple.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everydays:_the_First_5000_Days#/media/File:Everydays,_the_First_5000_Days.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The last decade has witnessed an explosion of interest in ultra-contemporary art, which spiked <a href="https://news.artnet.com/market/morgan-stanley-intelligence-report-triumph-contemporary-2109417">305% in total market value</a> between 2019 and 2021. You may have read about the 2021 auction at Christies of Beeple’s digital artwork <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/11/22325054/beeple-christies-nft-sale-cost-everydays-69-million">Everydays: The First 5000 Days</a> for $69 million. During the same period, paintings by <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/16/matthew-wongs-life-in-light-and-shadow">Matthew Wong</a> – a gifted artist who died in 2019 aged just 35 – commanded more than $70 million. </p>
<p>Financially, the high-water mark was set last year. A glance at this year’s Frieze showed that there is more emphasis on what the Art Newspaper describes as “<a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/10/11/galleries-rely-on-tried-and-tested-names-at-frieze-london">tried-and-tested names</a>”. This shift could reflect gloomy economic sentiment because of the global inflation crisis and a worsening geopolitical picture. These circumstances see investors retreating to safer asset classes. In the art world, this means older, more established names</p>
<p>Art enters the market via galleries. But secondary sales at auction set actual value once a pattern of prices emerge across numerous transactions. When speculation inflates an artist’s auction prices, galleries also raise the prices of new works. </p>
<p>German artist Anselm Reyle’s auction prices climbed 1,000% in 2007, <a href="https://news.artnet.com/market/market-analysis-what-now-for-anselm-reyle-after-hes-shuttered-his-studio-1092">then crashed</a>, leaving him unable to sell or even pay studio costs. For a while, he was forced into a very youthful “retirement”. Many ultra-contemporary artists today face a similar fate as the market cools again.</p>
<p>My advice to aspiring artists? Avoid the dopamine-fuelled blandishments of social media and focus on following your creative joy. Nurture supportive relationships with those who might help you on your path to fame, should you seek it. Cultivate relationships with the collectors, journalists, curators and gallerists who can help you on your way. Fame’s allure is strong, but its foundations are fragile. Avoiding the perils of early recognition allows space for your talent to mature. Focus on your work, and make that its own success. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215829/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benedict Carpenter van Barthold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fame for artists has become less about the individual and more about their place with the large commercial art world ecosystem.Benedict Carpenter van Barthold, Lecturer, School of Art & Design, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1967922022-12-23T16:42:06Z2022-12-23T16:42:06ZCalling Deion Sanders a sellout ignores the growing role of clout-chasing in college sports<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501978/original/file-20221219-14-jjx1kn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=140%2C39%2C5055%2C3383&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jackson State Tigers coach Deion Sanders greets right tackle Deontae Graham during the Cricket Celebration Bowl on Dec. 17, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jackson-state-tigers-coach-deion-sanders-greets-right-news-photo/1245687709?phrase=deion sanders&adppopup=true"> Austin McAfee/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For most college football coaches, the move from a mid-major conference to a Power Five conference would be met with widespread praise.</p>
<p>Not so for Deion Sanders.</p>
<p>When the Pro Football Hall of Famer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/sports/ncaafootball/deion-sanders-colorado-jackson-state.html">announced he would be leaving Jackson State University</a>, where he has coached the football team since 2020, to become head coach at the University of Colorado Boulder, many ardent fans and supporters reacted with dismay and disbelief – particularly his fans and supporters from the Black community.</p>
<p>Jackson State is one of <a href="http://www.thehundred-seven.org/hbculist.html">107 historically Black colleges and universities</a>, or HBCUs. Some HBCU alumni and supporters <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6X9YNUMECA">saw Sanders as betraying the cause of rejuvenating HBCU sports</a> and returning them to a time when football greats such as <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/R/RiceJe00.htm">Jerry Rice</a>, <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/P/PaytWa00.htm">Walter Payton</a> and <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/M/McNaSt00.htm">Steve McNair</a> attended HBCUs as a stepping stone to professional stardom. </p>
<p>Debates about whether he was a “<a href="https://eurweb.com/2022/deion-sanders-labelled-a-sellout/">sellout</a>,” a “traitor” and a “hypocrite” quickly surfaced on social media and in <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/deion-sanders-sell-experts-say-s-complicated-rcna60552">major media outlets</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1599059649889640448"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4gfj6hYAAAAJ&hl=en">As a scholar who specializes in Black culture</a>, I was struck by the ways in which this Sanders story was tied to a concept I write about called <a href="https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/18433">clout-chasing</a>. It’s a process in which cultural capital is harnessed on social media to attract media attention, likes, followers and fame. You’ll often see young people looking to launch careers as content creators described as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/12/clout-definition-meme-influencers-social-capital-youtube/603895/">clout chasers</a>.</p>
<p>Institutions, however, can also chase clout. And I saw Jackson State doing just that when it hired Deion Sanders.</p>
<h2>Black Schools Matter</h2>
<p>Over the past decade – after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, the spread of national anthem protests and the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor – HBCUs have received more attention and investment as places for the revitalization and advancement of the Black community.</p>
<p>In 2019, Black billionaire Robert Smith promised to pay the student loan debt of that year’s <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/03/22/morehouse-grads-thrive-after-student-debt-wiped-out.html#:%7E:text=It's%20something%20400%20Morehouse%20graduates,at%20their%20commencement%20in%202019">entire graduating class at Morehouse College</a>. In the summer of 2021, the Department of Education awarded <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/17/fact-sheet-the-biden-%E2%81%A0harris-administrations-historic-investments-and-support-for-historically-black-colleges-and-universities/">more than US$500 million</a> in grants to HBCUs. Finally, President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan and other forms of pandemic relief have provided <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/17/fact-sheet-the-biden-%E2%81%A0harris-administrations-historic-investments-and-support-for-historically-black-colleges-and-universities/">nearly $3.7 billion in relief funding to HBCUs</a>.</p>
<p>HBCU athletic departments have also received increased visibility. Though HBCU programs have always been overshadowed by schools in conferences like the Big Ten and SEC – what are known as <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10053822-ranking-the-college-football-power-5-conferences">Power Five conferences</a> – HBCU sports have started to receive more national television coverage. Top recruits <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/hbcus-appealing-high-profile-athletes/story?id=76210979">have started taking official visits to HBCUs</a> as they weigh which school to commit to. </p>
<p>In the summer of 2020, after star basketball recruit Makur Maker spurned offers from the University of Kentucky and UCLA to attend Howard University, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/sports/ncaabasketball/black-lives-matter-hbcus-college-athletes.html">The New York Times proclaimed</a> that a movement of top Black athletes attending HBCUs was underway.</p>
<h2>A star with staying power</h2>
<p>Like many, I grew up watching Deion Sanders play professional football and baseball. I idolized him. He wore gold chains, danced his way to the end zone, wore expensive suits and – most importantly – he was a celebrity who fully embraced Black popular culture. He was also one of the first athletes to understand that he was a brand off the field. </p>
<p>His appeal transcended race, gender and class, putting him in a rarefied group that includes Michael Jordan, Serena Williams and LeBron James.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two football players anticipate a pass." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Over the course of 14 seasons, defensive back Deion Sanders was elected to eight Pro Bowls.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dion-sanders-of-the-dallas-cowboys-guards-j-j-birden-of-the-news-photo/466184829?phrase=deion%20sanders&adppopup=true">Focus on Sport/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even after his <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/SandDe00.htm">playing career</a> ended in 2005, Sanders’ star never dimmed. He had <a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/07/deion-sanders-oprah-winfrey-reality-show">his own reality show</a> produced by Oprah, has served as a regular analyst on the NFL Network, and has acted as a pitchman for companies like Nike, Under Armour, American Airlines and Aflac.</p>
<p>Sanders has also seamlessly adapted to the social media era, regularly posting videos on Instagram to <a href="https://www.instagram.com/deionsanders/?hl=en">an audience of 3 million followers</a>. </p>
<p>Simply put, he is still one of the most famous people in the world. Like his younger counterparts with huge online followings – digital natives like <a href="https://www.instagram.com/obj/?hl=en">Odell Beckham Jr.</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/melo/?hl=en">LaMelo Ball</a> – Sanders possesses an immense amount of <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/ghhs/2020/00000001/00000002/art00003?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf&casa_token=G0nsPOIRXqcAAAAA:6Ze57p_2E_kNntxCNSQc-b2DzuWpJ_KtqTy2MG3po7wCLDq0n28IhvClUFvj-Afz1xhgwuKNKa0">digital clout</a>. </p>
<h2>Coach Prime joins the HBCU ranks</h2>
<p>I was hardly surprised when Sanders made a quick splash in Jackson. </p>
<p>Fueled by the talents of his son, quarterback <a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/player/_/id/4432762/shedeur-sanders">Shedeur Sanders</a>, and former top high school recruit <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10059142-5-star-cb-travis-hunter-to-transfer-from-jsu-comments-on-deion-sanders-colorado">Travis Hunter</a>, Jackson State quickly attracted national attention as a HBCU powerhouse.</p>
<p>After a COVID-shortened 2020 season, Sanders, whose players affectionately call him <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10058741-coach-prime-trailer-drops-for-deion-sanders-jsu-football-docuseries-by-prime-video">Coach Prime</a>, led the school to two consecutive appearances at the Celebration Bowl, an annual game in which the champions of the two prominent HBCU conferences face off.</p>
<p>While boosting Jackson State’s profile, Sanders also presented himself as someone scholars like Brandon J. Manning have termed a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZxJClMVBYU">race man</a>,” or a loyal member of the Black race who dedicates their life to directly contributing to the betterment of Black people. </p>
<p>Under the pretense of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxI848ELSEE">looking out for the future of HBCU athletics</a>, <a href="https://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=34896671">Sanders said</a> he would be better positioned than anybody to protect the legacy of HBCUs. Black student athletes, he argued, should choose to go to Jackson State because their association with him would not only give them clout, but also the kind of attention and encouragement that they could expect to receive from a Power Five program. </p>
<p>Yet it was always going to be close to impossible to keep Sanders at Jackson State if he consistently won. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.yardbarker.com/college_football/articles/paul_finebaum_says_nick_saban_would_lose_sleep_over_deion_sanders_as_auburns_next_coach/s1_13132_37910995">Many suspected</a> that Sanders eventually wanted to compete against top-tier programs like the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia. In fact, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz1YfvAw5Ow">during an October 2022 interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes</a>,” Sanders talked openly about listening to offers from bigger schools. </p>
<p>Despite these realities, many Black folk wanted to believe Sanders would be in it for the long haul. Now they’re dismayed, believing the momentum Sanders gave to HBCU athletics could come to a screeching halt.</p>
<h2>God changes his mind</h2>
<p>But unlike some prominent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkqKkW2SxeE">Black cultural critics who derided Sanders’ decision</a>, I don’t think he’s a sellout. </p>
<p>Jackson State was arguably chasing some clout of its own when it hired Deion in the first place. At the time, Sanders was a coach with no experience beyond the high school level. He did, however, have plenty of experience performing – and winning – in the brightest of spotlights. Jackson State probably knew that taking a flier on an untested celebrity coach would be worth it: It would attract attention and, with it, money.</p>
<p>On the flip side, I also believe Sanders knew that he could build his coaching clout further at Jackson State by appealing to what sociologist Saida Grundy calls <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520340398/respectable">the Black respectability politics</a> and Christian values of HBCU campuses. You could see this <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/sports/college/jackson-state/2020/09/22/deion-sanders-says-why-he-took-jackson-state-job-good-morning-america/5863325002/">when he said</a> that God told him “to even the playing field” for those who attend Black schools.</p>
<p>It was a symbiotic arrangement all along: Sanders leveraged his clout to grow the program that embraced him, but he was also hoping to attract the attention of an even bigger program. </p>
<p>I believe Sanders ultimately did more good than harm in terms of raising the profile of HBCU athletics. Furthermore, one person was never going to catapult HBCUs to the prominence of Power Five programs. </p>
<p>Sanders is part of a bigger group of former professional players and coaches leading HBCU programs. Former NFL head coach Hue Jackson <a href="https://www.thenewsstar.com/story/sports/college/gsu/2022/02/15/hue-jackson-contract-grambling-state-football/6800931001/">now heads the football program</a> at Grambling State University; NFL Pro Bowler Eddie George <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/sports/college/2021/04/11/eddie-george-coach-tennessee-state-university-football-tsu-derrick-mason/7183662002/">currently mans the sidelines</a> at Tennessee State University; and Pro Football Hall of Famer <a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/35330809/hall-famer-ed-reed-head-coach-bethune-cookman">Ed Reed</a> was recently named the head coach at Bethune-Cookman. </p>
<p>If Sanders was a sellout, it was only in one sense: Jackson State football games routinely sold out during his tenure, <a href="https://theanalyst.com/na/2022/10/jackson-state-keeps-producing-jaw-dropping-attendance-under-coach-prime/">shattering attendance records for the program</a>.</p>
<p><em>This article has been edited to remove the mention of Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, who no longer serves as the head women’s basketball coach at Texas Southern University.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196792/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jabari M. Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While Sanders deftly played the game of Black respectability politics during his short tenure, Jackson State had motives of its own when it hired the former NFL star.Jabari M. Evans, Assistant Professor of Race and Media, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1883632022-09-27T20:10:04Z2022-09-27T20:10:04Z‘Prima donna in pigtails’: how Julie Andrews the child star embodied the hopes of post-war Britain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486420/original/file-20220926-57491-hqtm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C10%2C3463%2C2539&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In June, the American Film Institute presented its 48th Life Achievement Award, the highest honour in American cinema, to the beloved stage-and-screen star <a href="https://www.afi.com/laa/julie-andrews/">Julie Andrews</a>. </p>
<p>On conferring the award, the AFI praised Andrews as “a legendary actress” who “has enchanted and delighted audiences around the world with her uplifting and inspiring body of work”.</p>
<p>As anyone who has seen Mary Poppins (1964) or The Sound of Music (1965) can attest, “uplift” is central to the <a href="https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/female-glamour-and-star-power/andrews/">Julie Andrews screen persona</a>. </p>
<p>It is a sweetness-and-light image that is easy to lampoon. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BZtTQSbl-nw/?hl=en">Andrews herself</a> is alleged to have quipped “sometimes I’m so sweet even I can’t stand it”. But it’s an element of feel-good edification that fuels much of the star’s iconic appeal. </p>
<p>The idea of Julie Andrews as a figure of uplift has a long history. </p>
<p>Decades before she attained global film stardom in Hollywood, Andrews enjoyed an early career as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19392397.2022.2109303">a child performer</a>. </p>
<p>Billed as “Britain’s youngest singing star”, she performed widely on the postwar concert and variety circuit with forays into radio, gramophone recording and even early television. </p>
<p>Possessing a precociously mature soprano voice, Andrews was widely promoted in the era as a <a href="https://paralleljulieverse.tumblr.com/post/63601790519/julies-status-as-a-juvenile-prodigy-possessed">child prodigy</a>. A 1945 BBC talent report filed when the young singer was just nine years old enthused over “this wonderful child discovery” whose “breath control, diction, and range is quite extraordinary for so young a child”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-austrians-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-sound-of-music-38137">How Austrians learned to stop worrying and love The Sound of Music</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Infant prodigy of trills’</h2>
<p>Andrews made her professional West End debut in 1947 where she dazzled audiences with a coloratura performance of the Polonaise from Mignon. Newspapers were ablaze with stories about the “12-year-old singing prodigy with the phenomenal voice”. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4apFkON6j1Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Reports claimed the pint-sized singer had a vocal range of over four octaves, a fully formed adult larynx and an upper <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle_register">whistle register</a> so high dogs would be beckoned whenever she sang. </p>
<p>On the back of such stories, Andrews was given a slew of lionising monikers: “prima donna in pigtails”, “infant prodigy of trills”, “the miracle voice” and “Britain’s juvenile coloratura”.</p>
<p>While much of it was PR hype, the representation of Andrews as an extraordinary musical prodigy resonated deeply with postwar British audiences. The devastation of the war cast <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK436946/">a long shadow</a>, and there was a keen sense a collective social rejuvenation was needed to reestablish national wellbeing. </p>
<p>The figure of the child was pivotal to the rhetoric of postwar British reconstruction. From political calls for <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0363199020945746">expanded child welfare</a> to the era’s booming <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30036327">family-oriented consumerism</a>, images of children saturated the cultural landscape, serving as a lightning rod for both <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/growing-up-in-the-second-world-war">social anxieties and hopes</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nxSLj9l3sr4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In her status as “Britain’s youngest singing star”, Andrews chimed with these postwar discourses of child-oriented renewal. </p>
<p>A popular myth even traced her prodigious talent to the very heart of the Blitz. Like a scene from a morale-boosting melodrama, the story claimed the young Andrews was huddled one night with family and friends in a Beckenham air raid shelter. In the middle of a communal singalong, a powerful voice suddenly materialised out of her tiny frame, astonishing all into silent delight.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/child-stars-the-power-and-the-price-of-cuteness-189444">Child stars: The power and the price of cuteness</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Our Julie’</h2>
<p>One of the most pointed alignments of Andrews’ juvenile stardom with a discourse of postwar British nationalism came with her appearance at the <a href="https://www.royalvarietycharity.org/royal-variety-performance/archive/detail/1948-london-palladium-">1948 Royal Command Variety Performance</a>. </p>
<p>Appearing just two weeks after her 13th birthday, Andrews was the youngest artist ever to participate in the annual event. It generated considerable media coverage and yet another grand nickname: “command singer in pigtails”. </p>
<p>Andrews performed a solo set at the event, and was also charged with leading the national anthem at the close.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SPnwENZaX8U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Ideals of restorative nationalism shaped Andrews’ child stardom in other ways. </p>
<p>Much of her early repertoire was markedly British, drawn from the English classical canon and rounded out by traditional folk songs. </p>
<p>Press reports emphasised, for all her remarkable talent, “our Julie” was still a typical English girl thoroughly unspoiled by fame. In accompanying images she would appear in idyllic scenarios of classic English childhood: playing with dolls, riding her bicycle, doing her homework.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, commentary was rife with speculations about Andrews’ prospects as “the next <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelina_Patti">Adelina Patti</a>” or “future <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Pons">Lily Pons</a>”. The mix of nostalgia and hope helped make the young Andrews a reassuring figure in the anxious landscape of postwar Britain. </p>
<h2>All grown up</h2>
<p>Little prodigies can’t remain little forever. There lies the troubled rub for many child stars, doomed by biology to lose their principal claim to fame. </p>
<p>In Andrews’ case, she was able to make the successful transition to adult stardom – and even greater fame – by moving country and professional register into the American stage and screen musical. </p>
<p>Still, the themes of therapeutic uplift that defined her early child stardom would follow Julie Andrews as she graduated to become the world’s favourite singing nanny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188363/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brett Farmer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Today she is most recognised for roles in Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music, but Julie Andrews made her professional West End debut at the age of 12.Brett Farmer, Lecturer in Film, Media and Communication, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1894442022-09-20T17:36:24Z2022-09-20T17:36:24ZChild stars: The power and the price of cuteness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483045/original/file-20220906-22-49l9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=182%2C132%2C5294%2C3377&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fame can bring young performers financial success, but it also comes with hidden costs.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/child-stars--the-power-and-the-price-of-cuteness" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Anyone who was paying attention to North American pop culture in the late 1990s and early 2000s will remember that it was a moment fascinated with childhood. The most mainstream entertainment revolved around idealized images of predominantly white children and young teens. From the appealing cast of the <a href="https://people.com/movies/harry-potter-where-is-the-cast-now/">Harry Potter</a> franchise to fresh faced <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-u5WLJ9Yk4">pop</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NPBIwQyPWE">princesses</a>, and child characters in shows for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_TO9E3ugLM">young</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtKqQNpFJCo">old</a>, idealized images of childhood were everywhere. </p>
<p>Many of those who performed the roles are now mature enough to <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/actress-mara-wilson-on-how-hollywood-treat-child-stars/">make sense of having been children growing up in the public eye</a>. It shouldn’t shock us that many of them had uncomfortable and even traumatic experiences. Adding to the intense drama of recent events in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53494405">Britney Spears’s life</a>, memoirs by <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/688129/run-towards-the-danger-by-sarah-polley/">Sarah Polley</a> and <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Im-Glad-My-Mom-Died/Jennette-McCurdy/9781982185824">Jennette McCurdy </a> force us to confront why we love to see child stars, and what our appetite for cute white kids says about us.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mickey-rooney-was-the-child-star-who-kept-on-working-25337">Mickey Rooney was the child star who kept on working</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The costs of stardom</h2>
<p>The phenomenon of childhood stardom is hardly a new one. Scholar <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Cultural-Significance-of-the-Child-Star/OConnor/p/book/9780415542678">Jane O'Connor suggests</a> that Jesus was the first child star; an apparently old soul in a tiny body whose ability to <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%202%3A41-52&version=NIV">dazzle adults</a> at a young age was a sign of things to come.</p>
<p>In the 1700s, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/maria-anna-mozart-the-familys-first-prodigy-1259016/">Mozart and his sister Maria Anna</a> spent much of their childhood on tour, performing adorableness and brilliance for audiences across Europe.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482385/original/file-20220901-4898-3syvbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white sketch shows a family in old European clothing. A young boy plays a piano while a man stands playing a violin behind him. A girl stands beside the piano holding a music sheet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482385/original/file-20220901-4898-3syvbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482385/original/file-20220901-4898-3syvbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482385/original/file-20220901-4898-3syvbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482385/original/file-20220901-4898-3syvbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482385/original/file-20220901-4898-3syvbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482385/original/file-20220901-4898-3syvbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482385/original/file-20220901-4898-3syvbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sketch of a young Mozart with his father and sister. Circa 1845.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the development of 20th century recording technology, child performers could be preserved on film and in sound, so that their charm is available to us forever.</p>
<p>The first real child star in Hollywood was <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001067/">Jackie Coogan</a>, who starred in Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 silent film masterpiece <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wg7QjQztlk"><em>The Kid</em></a>. That performance launched a career that would make him an international star before he was 10. When he reached adulthood, however, he found that his mother and step-father had spent all of his earnings, and worse, that there was no law preventing them from having done so. Coogan sued, but he was only able to regain a fraction of his earnings.</p>
<p>California enacted <a href="https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/young-performers/coogan-law">Coogan’s Law</a> in 1939 to protect the financial interests of children working in film. Many child stars since Coogan have been the <a href="https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/child-stars-family-financial-issues">primary breadwinners</a> for their households, in a tricky inversion of family hierarchy.</p>
<p>At the dramatic climax of <em>The Kid</em>, five-year-old Jackie <a href="https://silentmoviesera.tumblr.com/post/101061341741/chaplinfortheages-filmiclife-the-kid">performed despair</a> with a conviction that transformed expectations for what a child actor could do. But how could such a young child access such profound emotion on command? His father had coached him for the scene by threatening to <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780810859111">leave him at a workhouse if he did not do well</a>.</p>
<p>In an age and place where many <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/16/158925367/child-labor-in-america-1920">children worked dangerous jobs</a> and had lost fathers in the Great War, the danger of poverty and abandonment was vivid, even to a small boy. Coogan’s heart-rending performance has provided emotional catharsis to millions of viewers over the last century — the price was his own distress and fear.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482551/original/file-20220902-13399-qyhp0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of a young boy looking out of a ship window." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482551/original/file-20220902-13399-qyhp0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482551/original/file-20220902-13399-qyhp0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482551/original/file-20220902-13399-qyhp0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482551/original/file-20220902-13399-qyhp0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482551/original/file-20220902-13399-qyhp0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482551/original/file-20220902-13399-qyhp0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482551/original/file-20220902-13399-qyhp0u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jackie Coogan in 1924. Coogan rose to fame starring alongside Charlie Chaplin in the 1921 film ‘The Kid.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Bibliothèque Nationale de France)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Working children and the inner child</h2>
<p>The ability to cry on cue remains “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Im-Glad-My-Mom-Died/Jennette-McCurdy/9781982185824">the skill you want in child acting</a>,” according to Jennette McCurdy, who played a leading role in the Nickelodeon TV show <em>iCarly</em>. For most audiences, the magic of child performers is the way they compel us to access our own feelings and reconnect with our inner child.</p>
<p>The sound of a child’s voice singing a familiar song is powerful because it evokes the future and the past simultaneously. We remember our own childhoods and we can also imagine that the music and stories we love will go on into a new generation. The child’s performance can provoke moments of poignancy that help us retain — or regain — our sense of humanity. </p>
<p>Historian Carolyn Steedman <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674839786">argues</a> that our cultural notion of “the self” came to take the form of a vulnerable child beginning in the 19th century. During that time, the use of children in <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/History-Boy-Chimney-Sweep/#:%7E:text=The%20chimney%20sweep%2C%20or%20climbing,the%20job%20by%20their%20parents.">dangerous</a> labour conditions juxtaposed uncomfortably with new ways of considering children as fragile and precious. Child stars in entertainment work in better conditions than chimney sweeps, of course. Still, it is essential to recognize child stars as labourers, whose bright eyes, dimpled cheeks and sweet voices are the tools of their trade. </p>
<p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691181813/the-power-of-cute">Our appetite for the power of cute</a> shows no signs of waning, so it’s important to confront the cost of child stars. Must real children do this work for us? Are there ways for children to experience the excitement of performing without the dangers of stardom?
Recent strategies for child actors indicate a positive shift. Australian animated show Bluey <a href="https://www.bountyparents.com.au/news-views/bluey-voice-cast/">protects the identities of its child actors</a> to allow them privacy alongside fame. This seems a healthy approach, but we won’t know for sure until those actors — and their child audiences — grow up and tell us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189444/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacqueline Warwick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What do we love about seeing children perform? And how do their performances shape our understanding of childhood?Jacqueline Warwick, Professor of Musicology, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1849022022-06-22T18:12:15Z2022-06-22T18:12:15ZWas there anything real about Elvis Presley?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469881/original/file-20220620-24-8ektb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C40%2C2213%2C1450&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pinpointing Elvis Presley's true persona can depend on when and whom you ask.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/singer-elvis-presley-looking-tired-and-somewhat-dejected-news-photo/50420521?adppopup=true">Don Cravens/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Baz Luhrmann’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkfplKD46Hs">Elvis</a>,” there’s a scene based on actual conversations that took place between Elvis Presley and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004596/">Steve Binder</a>, the director of <a href="https://www.blogtalkradio.com/feisty-side-of-fifty/2022/04/28/steve-binder-elvis-68-comeback-the-story-behind-the-special">a 1968 NBC television special</a> that signaled the singer’s return to live performing. </p>
<p>Binder, an iconoclast unimpressed by Presley’s recent work, had pushed Elvis to reach back into his past to revitalize a career stalled by years of mediocre movies and soundtrack albums. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_I4h_Wm_aY">According to the director</a>, their exchanges left the performer engrossed in <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/08/elvis-presley-comeback-special-1968-50th-anniversary">deep soul-searching</a>.</p>
<p>In the trailer to Luhrmann’s biopic, a version of this back-and-forth plays out: Elvis, portrayed by Austin Butler, says to the camera, “I’ve got to get back to who I really am.” Two frames later, Dacre Montgomery, playing Binder, asks, “And who are you, Elvis?”</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p072703">scholar of southern history</a> who has written a book about Elvis, I still find myself wondering the same thing.</p>
<p>Presley never wrote a memoir. Nor did he keep a diary. Once, when informed of a potential biography in the works, <a href="https://www.proquest.com/magazines/making-presley-biography/docview/2509565622/se-2?accountid=196683">he expressed doubt</a> that there was even a story to tell. Over the years, he had submitted to numerous interviews and press conferences, but the quality of these exchanges was erratic, frequently characterized by superficial answers to even shallower questions. </p>
<p>His music could have been a window into his inner life, but since he wasn’t a songwriter, his material depended on the words of others. Even the rare revelatory gems – songs like “If I Can Dream,” “Separate Ways” or “My Way” – didn’t fully penetrate the veil shrouding the man. </p>
<p>Binder’s philosophical inquiry, then, was not merely philosophical. Countless fans and scholars have long wanted to know: Who was Elvis, really?</p>
<h2>A barometer for the nation</h2>
<p>Pinpointing Presley can depend on when and whom you ask. At the dawn of his career, admirers and critics alike branded him the “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Elvis_Presley/NqCQo9nqVHYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22elvis%22+%22bobbie+ann+mason%22&printsec=frontcover">Hillbilly Cat</a>.” Then he became the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” a <a href="https://www.historynet.com/rock-n-roll-n-race-a-fresh-look-at-the-keystone-of-the-elvis-presley-legend/">musical monarch</a> that promoters placed on a mythical throne.</p>
<p>But for many, he was always the “<a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203700648-22/king-white-trash-culture-elvis-presley-aesthetics-excess-annalee-newitz-matt-wray">King of White Trash Culture</a>” – a working-class white southern rags-to-riches story that <a href="https://www.elvis-collectors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=51286&sid=9bb9e7df80f341cfbdcc376d828e8d21">never quite convinced the national establishment</a> of his legitimacy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man with blue eyes and sideburns speaks into microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elvis Presley during a press conference at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1972.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/elvis-presley-close-up-taken-on-his-first-trip-to-nyc-at-news-photo/529306471?adppopup=true">Art Zelin/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These overlapping identities capture the provocative fusion of class, race, gender, region and commerce that Elvis embodied.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most contentious aspect of his identity was the singer’s relationship to race. As a white artist who profited greatly from the popularization of a style associated with African Americans, Presley, throughout his career, worked under <a href="https://www.southerncultures.org/article/elvis-presley-politics-popular-memory/%20%22%22">the shadow and suspicion of racial appropriation</a>.</p>
<p>The connection was complicated and fluid, to be sure. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/05/25/elvis-presley-rock-and-roll-graceland/%20%22%22">Quincy Jones</a> met and worked with Presley in early 1956 as the musical director of CBS-TV’s “Stage Show.” In his 2002 <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Q/zs1ixtkcJU8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22quincy+jones%22+%22memoir%22+%22elvis%22&printsec=frontcover">autobiography</a>, Jones noted that Elvis should be listed with Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson as pop music’s greatest innovators. However, by 2021, in the midst of a changing racial climate, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/quincy-jones-michael-jackson-elvis-presley-1234955138/">Jones was dismissing Presley as an unabashed racist</a>.</p>
<p>Elvis seems to serve as a barometer measuring America’s various tensions, with the gauge less about Presley and more about the nation’s pulse at any given moment.</p>
<h2>You are what you consume</h2>
<p>But I think there’s another way to think about Elvis – one that might put into context many of the questions surrounding him.</p>
<p><a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fellows-book/a-troubled-feast-american-society-since-1945/">Historian William Leuchtenburg</a> once characterized Presley as a “consumer culture hero,” a manufactured commodity more image than substance.</p>
<p>The assessment was negative; it also was incomplete. It didn’t consider how a consumerist disposition may have shaped Elvis prior to his becoming an entertainer. </p>
<p>Presley reached adolescence as a post-World War II consumer economy was hitting its stride. A product of unprecedented affluence and pent-up demand caused by depression and wartime sacrifice, it provided almost <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/highlights-guide-consumer">unlimited opportunities for those seeking to entertain and define themselves</a>.</p>
<p>The teenager from Memphis, Tennessee, took advantage of these opportunities. Riffing off the idiom “you are what you eat,” Elvis became what <a href="https://kennedy.byu.edu/you-are-what-you-eat/">he consumed</a>.</p>
<p>During his formative years, he shopped at <a href="https://lanskybros.com/">Lansky Brothers</a>, a clothier on Beale Street that outfitted African American performers and provided him with secondhand pink-and-black ensembles. </p>
<p>He tuned into the radio station <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/wdia-radio-station-1947/">WDIA</a>, where he soaked up gospel and rhythm and blues tunes, along with the vernacular of black disk jockeys. He turned the dial to WHBQ’s “Red, Hot, and Blue,” a program that had <a href="https://memphismusichalloffame.com/inductee/deweyphillips/">Dewey Phillips</a> spinning an eclectic mix of R&B, pop and country. He visited <a href="https://www.poplartunes.com/">Poplar Tunes</a> and <a href="http://thedeltareview.com/album-reviews/the-young-willie-mitchell-and-ruben-cherrys-home-of-the-blues-records/">Home of the Blues</a> record stores, where he purchased the music dancing in his head. And at the <a href="http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/4183">Loew’s State</a> and <a href="http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14070">Suzore #2</a> movie theaters, he took in the latest Marlon Brando or Tony Curtis movies, imagining in the dark how to emulate their demeanor, sideburns, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducktail">ducktails</a>.</p>
<p>In short, he gleaned from the nation’s burgeoning consumer culture the persona that the world would come to know. Elvis alluded to this in 1971 when he provided a rare glimpse into his psyche upon receiving a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9HWlYoR40A%20%22%22">Jaycees Award</a> as one of the nation’s Ten Outstanding Young Men:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamed has come true a hundred times … I’d like to say that I learned very early in life that ‘without a song, the day would never end. Without a song, a man ain’t got a friend. Without a song, the road would never bend. Without a song.’ So, I’ll keep singing a song.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In that acceptance speech, he quoted “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200215452/">Without a Song</a>,” a standard tune performed by artists including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Roy Hamilton – seamlessly presenting the lyrics as if they were words directly applicable to his own life experiences.</p>
<h2>A loaded question</h2>
<p>Does this make the Jaycees recipient some sort of “odd, lonely child reaching for eternity,” as Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks, tells an adult Presley in the new “Elvis” film?</p>
<p>I don’t think so. Instead, I see him as someone who simply devoted his life to consumption, a not uncommon late 20th-century behavior. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/dec/19/highereducation.uk2">Scholars have noted that</a> whereas Americans once defined themselves through their genealogy, jobs, or faith, they increasingly started to identify themselves through their tastes – and, by proxy, what they consumed. As <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/me-the-self-and-i/201904/how-do-we-form-identities-in-consumer-society">Elvis crafted his identity</a> and pursued his craft, he did the same.</p>
<p>It also was evident in how he spent most of his downtime. A tireless worker on stage and in the recording studio, those settings nevertheless demanded relatively little of his time. For most of the 1960s, he made three movies annually, each taking no more than a month to complete. That was the extent of <a href="https://theconversation.com/elvis-presley-was-paid-a-kings-ransom-for-sub-par-movies-because-they-were-marketing-gold-81586">his professional obligations</a>.</p>
<p>From 1969 to his death in 1977, only 797 out of 2,936 days were devoted to performing <a href="https://www.concertarchives.org/bands/elvis-presley">concerts</a> or recording in the <a href="https://blackgold.org/GroupedWork/d29f6423-5784-ccf6-6ca1-cff37b9081e9-eng/Home">studio</a>. Most of his time was dedicated to vacationing, playing sports, riding motorcycles, zipping around on go-karts, horseback riding, watching TV and eating.</p>
<p>By the time he died, Elvis was a shell of his former self. Overweight, bored, and chemically dependent, he appeared <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/04/07/elvis-in-his-prime-was-america-now-america-is-elvis-in-decline/">spent</a>. A few weeks before his demise, a Soviet publication <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/07/29/archives/notes-on-people.html">described him</a> as “wrecked” – a “pitilessly” dumped product victimized by the American consumerist system. </p>
<p>Elvis Presley proved that consumerism, when channeled productively, could be creative and liberating. He likewise demonstrated that left unrestrained, it could be empty and destructive.</p>
<p>Luhrmann’s movie promises to reveal a great deal about one of the most captivating and enigmatic figures of our time. But I have a hunch it will also tell Americans a lot about themselves.</p>
<p>“Who are you, Elvis?” the trailer hauntingly probes.</p>
<p>Maybe the answer is easier than we think. He’s all of us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael T. Bertrand does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Presley never wrote a memoir. Nor did he keep a diary. His music could have been a window into his inner life, but he didn’t even write his songs.Michael T. Bertrand, Professor of History, Tennessee State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1673282021-09-10T12:29:59Z2021-09-10T12:29:59ZHow ‘sissy men’ became the latest front in China’s campaign against big tech<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420304/original/file-20210909-17-sxy7bj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C3982%2C2712&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Workers congregate in a meeting room at the headquarters of BlueCity, the parent company of Blued, China's most popular dating app for gay men.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-picture-taken-on-december-10-2020-shows-employees-at-news-photo/1230472609?adppopup=true">Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Chinese government <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-bans-sissy-men-tv/">has recently taken action</a> against what it calls “sissy men” – males, often celebrities, deemed too effeminate.</p>
<p>On Sept. 2,2021, government <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-bans-sissy-men-tv/">regulators banned their appearance</a> on both television and video streaming sites. Using the Chinese derogatory slur “niang pao” – literally, “girlie guns” – Chinese cultural authorities <a href="https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/content-regulation/">explained that they were rolling out a rule</a> to purge “morally flawed celebrities” in order to “correct aesthetics” in “performing styles” and “wardrobes and makeups.” </p>
<p>Technically this is a rule, not a law. But thanks to the strong control the Chinese government exerts over industry, the tech companies that give these celebrities a platform <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/06/business/china-bts-kpop-fans.html">have quickly fallen in line</a>.</p>
<p>The international community may view the rule as yet another example of Chinese repression <a href="https://qz.com/630159/chinas-new-television-rules-ban-homosexuality-drinking-and-vengeance/">centered on LBGTQ communities</a>.</p>
<p>And this could be true, to an extent. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://scholar.google.nl/citations?user=PUBDsVIAAAAJ&hl=en">as someone who studies China’s queer cultures</a>, I’m also attuned to the way pronouncements made by the Chinese government often cloak a hidden agenda. </p>
<p>To me, it’s no coincidence that the ban has come during the intense national campaign against China’s domestic big tech giants, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/beyond-security-crackdown-beijing-charts-state-controlled-data-market-2021-07-20/">which the government increasingly sees as a threat</a> to its ability to keep tabs on its citizens.</p>
<h2>The rise of effeminate male ‘traffic stars’</h2>
<p>In the mid-2010s the Chinese government’s grip on the country’s entertainment sector began to weaken after decades of control over <a href="https://time.com/4247432/china-tv-television-media-censorship/">who could star on TV and what sort of stories could be told</a>. TV dramas, films and talent shows produced by private tech companies started to take off, while <a href="http://www.nrta.gov.cn/art/2018/10/20/art_2178_39216.html">ratings and ad revenues of state-owned television stations tumbled</a>.</p>
<p>Beginning in 2016, the government <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1918020/china-tightens-censorship-online-tv-programmes-days-after">started to censor web videos with the same criteria it had been using for television</a>. However, the restrictions seemed to only inspire more creative and subversive expressions of sexuality on video streaming sites. </p>
<p>For example, images of two men kissing and holding hands were banned. So creators simply used dialogues and gestures, like intense eye contact, to convey homosexual intimacy. Furthermore, these rules didn’t regulate the physical appearance of characters.</p>
<p>Since 2017, shows produced by the country’s leading video streaming platforms – many of which mimic the basic format of shows like “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-most-american-pop-culture-phenomenon-of-them-all-56555">American Idol</a>” and “<a href="https://www.nbc.com/the-voice">The Voice</a>” – have launched the careers of a number of effeminate male celebrities. </p>
<p>These shows include “The Coming One” and “CHUANG 2021,” which appear on Tencent Video, a streaming site owned by Tencent, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/business/Tencent-WeChat-China.html">the Chinese technology conglomerate that also owns WeChat</a>. Meanwhile, “Idol Producer” and “Youth With You” appear on another video service provider, iQiyi, a subsidiary of <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/18/baidu-launches-robocar-and-ai-chip-in-bid-to-diversify-business.html">Baidu</a>, the Chinese equivalent of Google. The male participants in these shows are often young, dress in unisex clothing, and apply orange-red eye shadow and lipstick, along with heavy makeup that whitens their skin and thickens their eyebrows.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/seELQmZ10F0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Contestants compete on ‘CHUANG 2021.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the past, female audiences would clamor for masculine looks or physiques in their male celebrities. Today’s young Chinese people, on the other hand, are more open to <a href="https://hkupress.hku.hk/pro/1614.php">challenging gender stereotypes</a>. Within online fan communities, femininity in male celebrities isn’t stigmatized; instead, it’s celebrated. They’ll call their female idols “brother” or “husband” and their male idols “wife” – names meant more as compliments than insults. </p>
<p>This shift can be traced, in large part, <a href="https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/article/3133459/why-china-cracking-down-reality-tv-shows-k-pop-inspired">to the influence</a> of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/2/16/16915672/what-is-kpop-history-explained">K-pop</a>, the South Korean pop music phenomenon in which many of the singers reject traditionally masculine ideals.</p>
<p>An easy way for male actors to achieve stardom is to appear in adaptions of “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2020.1754626">boys’ love novels</a>,” an online fiction genre originating in Japan that features homoerotic relationships between men. </p>
<p>Take the actor <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7757091/">Zhang Zhehan</a>. For years, he played masculine characters in several TV shows. Still, he remained largely unknown until he appeared in the adaption of the boys’ love novel “Word of Honor,” which appeared in early 2021 on Youku, a streaming service owned by the tech giant Alibaba. </p>
<p>His female fans <a href="https://s.weibo.com/weibo?q=%E5%8D%81%E5%B9%B4%E7%A1%AC%E6%B1%89%E6%97%A0%E4%BA%BA%E7%9F%A5%20%E4%B8%80%E6%9C%9D%E8%80%81%E5%A9%86%E5%A4%A9%E4%B8%8B%E9%97%BB">even invented a meme</a> to describe Zhang’s rapid rise to fame: “manning up for a decade failed, but [he] succeeded as a wife overnight.” </p>
<h2>Reasserting control</h2>
<p>Despite their perceived effeminate mannerisms, these male celebrities have amassed a huge following among female viewers. Typically, their shows can generate <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/international/8487693/idol-producer-winner-kun-china-interview-cai-xukun-nine-percent">billions of views and considerable ad revenue</a>.</p>
<p>Celebrities whose fame emerged out of shows like “The Coming One” and “Idol Producer” are called “<a href="https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1008245/for-chinas-traffic-stars%2C-a-sudden-crash">traffic stars</a>” because they’re more dependent on their massive followings than on any specific skill such as singing, acting or dancing. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men wearing jewelry and makeup pose on a bed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420310/original/file-20210909-21-6ocn9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420310/original/file-20210909-21-6ocn9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420310/original/file-20210909-21-6ocn9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420310/original/file-20210909-21-6ocn9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420310/original/file-20210909-21-6ocn9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420310/original/file-20210909-21-6ocn9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420310/original/file-20210909-21-6ocn9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ten and YangYang are two members of the Chinese boy band WayV, whose sound and style are heavily influenced by K-pop.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2021/09/03/0b2701c5-85b9-4207-b4b3-debab3c1a540_a84036f8.jpg">SM Entertainment</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since views, shares and likes have become the dominant metric for a celebrity’s popularity and market value, fans will organize to actively manipulate social media features such as ranking lists and trending topics in support of their idols. This “<a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1232634.shtml">data worship</a>” – to use the terminology of the Chinese authorities – ultimately boosts the revenue of the big tech companies that promote and host the stars.</p>
<p>Therefore, the profits of tech companies and the proliferation of internet influencers, movie stars and TV personalities have become increasingly intertwined.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-tech/2021/08/18/china-seeks-greater-control-over-its-own-big-tech-797224">For a country seeking to rein in the power of big tech companies</a>, these effeminate idols become an obvious target. </p>
<h2>Possible ramifications</h2>
<p>Although it could be argued that everyday LGBTQ people aren’t the real target of the most recent policy, I believe it will almost certainly have a pernicious effect on China’s marginalized gender groups and LGBTQ communities. </p>
<p>In China, the government has long exploited gender and sexuality in the service of political needs. During the first three decades of the People’s Republic of China – from 1949 to 1978 – <a href="https://www.niaspress.dk/book/queer-comrades/">homosexuality was portrayed as the epitome of capitalist vice</a> and was, therefore, seen as incompatible with the values of the Communist party-state.</p>
<p>After China’s market reforms in 1978 and the “opening up” of the country, people – especially in China’s cities – <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/Desiring-China">became more comfortable calling themselves gay</a>.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the state-run Xinhua News agency even <a href="https://dare.uva.nl/search?identifier=553a17f6-7c90-48ac-b3be-a7fd82d6670a">published articles championing the gay website Danlan</a> – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/magazine/blued-china-gay-dating-app.html">a precursor to Blued</a>, the most popular gay dating app in the world – in order to portray China as an inclusive and diverse place and to deflect international criticism of China’s poor record on human rights.</p>
<p>Thanks to digital technology and the growth of online subcultures, China has achieved some real progress in the acceptance of gender and sexual minorities over the past decade. Young women often speak of having a “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460718773689">gay confidant</a>” (“gaymi” in Chinese), while young straight men are keen to call their male friends “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2016.1253393">good gay buddies</a>”(“hao jiyou”).</p>
<p>So it’s a bit surprising to see a gender slur – “girlie guns” – being written into government policy and repeated throughout the country’s mainstream media outlets.</p>
<p>And it isn’t difficult to envision more anti-LGBTQ bullying, harassment and violence in schools and workplaces as a result.</p>
<p>After all, if the government condones a slur, who’s to say it’s wrong to use it to attack others?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shuaishuai Wang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pronouncements made by the Chinese government often cloak a hidden agenda.Shuaishuai Wang, Lecturer of New Media and Digital Culture, University of AmsterdamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1612522021-06-17T12:29:13Z2021-06-17T12:29:13ZBeing a pop star once meant baring skin – now, for artists like Billie Eilish and Demi Lovato, it’s all about emotional stripping<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405505/original/file-20210609-14847-9m19mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C68%2C4556%2C2982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demi Lovato and other pop stars are increasingly opening up about their trauma.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BritainDemiLovatoConcert/52cb976aff9748a0950646be27bc789a/photo?Query=demi%20AND%20lovato&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=4795&currentItemNo=123">Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Billie Eilish’s 2019 video for “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHC9tYz8ik">Bury A Friend</a>,” the then-17-year-old singer blurs the lines between being in a nightmare and being committed to a psychiatric hospital.</p>
<p>“I want to end me,” <a href="https://genius.com/Billie-eilish-bury-a-friend-lyrics">she repeats six times</a> before the song ends. </p>
<p>But somehow, that’s not what stuck with audiences, media outlets or industry decision-makers, who – <a href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/news/article/billie-eilish-vogue-interview">until her British Vogue cover broke on May 2</a> – were more likely to talk about <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/ikrd/billie-eilish-said-she-dresses-in-baggy-clothes-to-avoid">how groundbreaking she was for wearing baggy clothes</a> than her repeated mentions of suicidal thoughts.</p>
<p>It’s a familiar story, whether it’s Amy Winehouse <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjmpZ2InIvxAhWBl-AKHSiKBd0QyCkwAHoECAIQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DKUmZp8pR1uc&usg=AOvVaw2EgcmXhTx4miKFUtc5IynV">singing about not wanting to go to rehab</a> before dying of alcohol poisoning at 27, or Kurt Cobain writing a song called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Hate_Myself_and_Want_to_Die">I Hate Myself and Want To Die</a>” before dying by suicide at 27.</p>
<p>Audiences devour trauma narratives. Perhaps they provide a source of comfort by validating viewers’ own experiences, making them feel less alone or reminding them that they’re comparatively lucky. On the flip side, the titillating content can offer fans a sort of voyeuristic pleasure from the safety of their living rooms. In any case, the implicit agreement appears to be that artists may express their pain as long as audiences can imagine that it’s not really a problem they need to be concerned with, but is just something being amplified for artistic effect. </p>
<p>While these revelations can boost an artist’s popularity, they can also overshadow all other aspects of the artists’ life and work – and can end up veering into another form of exploitation.</p>
<h2>After the clothes come off, what’s next?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.emerson.edu/faculty-staff-directory/kristin-lieb">As someone who has studied female pop stars</a> for nearly two decades, I’ve written about how, since the advent of MTV in the 1980s, the music industry has fashioned women pop stars to resonate more as sexy entertainers than as talented musicians. </p>
<p>They are more likely to be framed as gorgeous, frivolous or “<a href="https://ew.com/article/2008/12/31/janet-jackson-h/%20than%20vocally%20or%20musically%20adept">hot messes</a>” than vocally or musically adept. In my book “<a href="http://kristinjlieb.com/book/">Gender, Branding, and The Modern Music Industry: The Social Construction of Female Popular Music Stars</a>,” I argue that positioning and managing female artists this way has had a negative effect on their creative expression, mental health and career longevity. </p>
<p>Because top stars have been shedding their clothes for decades, skin-deep revelations have become so common they no longer stand out. So, in a crisis for connection, stars reversed the order of operations, keeping their clothes on while sharing their secrets. Stars began to expose their insides – more specifically, their inner turmoil – in bids for deeper relationships with their fans. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A nude Christina Aguilera clutches a guitar on the cover of a magazine." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405497/original/file-20210609-14833-1d4v0mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405497/original/file-20210609-14833-1d4v0mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405497/original/file-20210609-14833-1d4v0mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405497/original/file-20210609-14833-1d4v0mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405497/original/file-20210609-14833-1d4v0mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405497/original/file-20210609-14833-1d4v0mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405497/original/file-20210609-14833-1d4v0mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christina Aguilera on the cover of a 2000 issue of Rolling Stone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://i.frog.ink/efVcleT/4473559646274-0_600.jpg?v=1583453921.83">Rolling Stone</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This broke the social contract of stardom. For decades, public relations efforts presented women stars as perfect – an impossible illusion for anyone to maintain. Until stars such as <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/78905/mariah-carey-under-psychiatric-care">Mariah Carey</a> and <a href="https://genius.com/Whitney-houston-transcript-of-crack-is-whack-interview-annotated">Whitney Houston</a> experienced public breakdowns, their struggles had largely been hidden to protect their impeccable brands. </p>
<p>Social media further changed the dynamic. Audiences <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/17/new-year-new-cool-mariah-carey">demanded greater authenticity</a> rather than PR spin. And that’s exactly what they’ve been getting for the past several years, as pop star brands have begun to embody and reflect current cultural concerns about misogyny, racism, sexual violence and mental health.</p>
<h2>#MeToo paves the way for emotional stripping</h2>
<p>Artists’ openness about their experiences with sexual violence, trauma and addiction represents an important shift toward thinking about them as people more than products.</p>
<p>However, today, many artists are making their personal vulnerabilities – not their music, their performances or their bodies – the centerpiece of their brands. </p>
<p>Prior to the popularization of #MeToo in 2017, pop stars had been offering their stories for years to varying levels of reception. In 2013, Madonna <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/news/a10264/madonna-opens-up-about-being-raped/">shared that she had been raped at knifepoint</a> shortly after moving to New York City. In 2014, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kesha-and-dr-luke-everything-you-need-to-know-to-understand-the-case-106731/">Kesha alleged that producer Dr. Luke</a> “sexually, physically, verbally, and emotionally” abused her for years, and in 2016 Lady Gaga <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38218247">revealed that she had experienced sexual trauma</a>, which resulted in ongoing PTSD. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/10/212801/me-too-movement-history-timeline-year-weinstein">the #MeToo movement</a> gained prominence in the fall of 2017, these popular artists experienced a long-overdue cultural rebranding, becoming esteemed warriors seeking to hold abusive systems and individual abusers accountable.</p>
<p>Audiences and media outlets became more sensitive to women’s struggles with mental health, addiction and trauma, and began to realize that maybe the stars’ breakdowns were actually reasonable human responses to various forms of gender-based abuse. They started hating the game, rather than blaming the players, and wanting to know more – all as the dominant streaming services were thirsty for more winning content. </p>
<p>The floodgates opened, but in typical American fashion, a good thing was overextended to the point of absurdity. </p>
<p>In recent years, more stars have told their own survivor stories in powerfully direct or resonant ways: Ariana Grande <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/entertainment/ariana-grande-ptsd-brain-scan-instagram-trnd/index.html">shared a brain scan to reveal her PTSD diagnosis in 2019</a>; Mariah Carey <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/11/09/931728500/mariah-careys-memoir-is-further-proof-she-has-a-gift-for-storytelling">released a memoir</a> in which she discussed past abuse, her 2001 breakdown and her bipolar disorder diagnosis; and, in 2021, Pink <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/shop/watch-pink-all-i-know-amazon-prime-video-stream-online-1234639389/">dropped a documentary</a> about her aptly titled “Beautiful Trauma” world tour. </p>
<p>Stars’ talent and musicianship has become almost incidental, subservient to their ability to process their pain in public. Pop stars’ oversharing detailed trauma stories has become routine.</p>
<p>I call it “emotional stripping.” </p>
<p>Emotional stripping is different from when artists transform trauma into great art, as Beyoncé did in “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11518702/lemonade-beyonce-explained">Lemonade</a>” and Fiona Apple pulled off in “<a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fiona-apple-fetch-the-bolt-cutters/">Fetch The Bolt Cutters</a>.” In each album, the artist is able to <a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fiona-apple-fetch-the-bolt-cutters/">universalize her struggles without giving away all of the personal details</a>. These albums embolden the stars as they share their rage, fear, disappointments and vulnerabilities.</p>
<p>But emotional stripping prioritizes the overexposure of the star’s human self – her traumas, her addictions, and her mental health struggles – above all other aspects of her brand and her personhood. When a star emotionally strips, she peels away her brand – which, if built and managed properly, should be the protective layer between herself and her audience. </p>
<p>This trend signals progress in one regard – audiences are now less singularly focused on objectifying the stars’ actual bodies, as they had been trained to do for decades. But it also creates a new danger; now audiences feel entitled to know the gory details about everything that happens to and within stars’ bodies and minds. They greedily consume trauma stories rather than thinking more deeply about how to stop the production of them.</p>
<p>Emotional stripping pays dividends: It gets the audience’s attention.</p>
<p>It can also come at great expense to the artist, who doesn’t magically heal by simply telling her story from a large enough platform. Talking about trauma has value, but it does not release it; as trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk noted in <a href="https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score">the title of his bestselling book</a>, “the body keeps the score.” It can also cause stars harm <a href="https://www.onlinemswprograms.com/resources/social-issues/how-to-be-mindful-re-traumatization/">through retraumatization</a>.</p>
<h2>The pop star as human sacrifice</h2>
<p>But given audience demands for authenticity and the proliferation of pop star tell-all streaming documentaries, it appears that most emerging artists vying for the top of the charts now have little choice but to reveal themselves anyway. Just as certain body types and fashion styles have defined the rules of engagement at other times, emotional stripping has become standard operating procedure in popular music.</p>
<p>This may seem like a dream come true. But it may be more like the waking nightmare depicted in Eilish’s video for “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHC9tYz8ik">Bury A Friend</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/entertainment/britney-responds-documentary-intl-scli/index.html">Britney Spears</a> and other 1990s stars, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2021/04/01/britney-spears-documentary-triggering-90-s-celebs-whats-changed/4836768001/">from Jennifer Love Hewitt to Paris Hilton</a>, reported being triggered by “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12673718/">Framing Britney Spears</a>,” a well-intentioned, pro-Britney documentary. Spears refused to participate in the film, which chronicled her breakdown, involuntary hospitalization and subsequent conservatorship. In the documentary “Tina,” <a href="https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2021/03/30/tina-2021-transcript/">Tina Turner indicated</a> that she was sick of talking about her abusive ex-husband Ike and wanted to move on. </p>
<p>The question is: Will audiences let Turner and other traumatized female pop stars move on? Or are audiences too invested in trauma narratives to let them go?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Paparazzi swarm Britney Spears' car." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405503/original/file-20210609-15050-ycee72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405503/original/file-20210609-15050-ycee72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405503/original/file-20210609-15050-ycee72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405503/original/file-20210609-15050-ycee72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405503/original/file-20210609-15050-ycee72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405503/original/file-20210609-15050-ycee72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405503/original/file-20210609-15050-ycee72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Framing Britney Spears,’ which chronicled the star’s breakdown, was well-intentioned. But Spears wanted nothing to do with it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PaparazziCelebrities/99bc263c243c4af89625f48a955b19b5/photo?Query=britney%20spears%20paparazzi&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=9&currentItemNo=6">AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fans’ laser focus on stars and stars’ tendency to please can even lead fans to disturbing levels of entitlement. Alanis Morissette, who wrote “Jagged Little Pill” when she was 19, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX6k_0F8CTs">shared that at the height of her popularity</a>, fans in crowds would literally try to grab pieces of her hair and skin. They wanted to possess a piece of her and felt emboldened to just take it. Fittingly, Katy Perry’s documentary was called “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2215719/">Part of Me</a>.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, it’s typically the star, not the audience, who gets constructed as being crazy or needing better boundaries as the public annihilates them. </p>
<p>There’s a precedent for this dynamic – the religious ritual of human sacrifice. </p>
<p>Religion scholar Kathryn Lofton <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0037768611412143">has written about this phenomenon</a> in her analysis of Britney Spears.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Ritual is a controlled environment, a ring for spectatorship. While there are many rituals at play in the religions of Britney Spears’ celebrity, perhaps the most tempting is that of sacrifice. Britney Spears rises and falls, time and again, is plumped for the slaughter then primed for the comeback. Watching those declines and ascents might be productively read as a sort of public sacrifice.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Spears has become the rule, not the exception. These days, pop stars seem to exist to entertain fans and carry their burdens, and can sometimes seem to even ultimately die for them, commercially or literally. Fans then move on to the next star, gorge on their trauma and then watch them flame out.</p>
<p>The silver lining is that we’re in the middle of the golden age of pop star documentaries. Some, like “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2870648/?ref_=nm_knf_i3">Amy</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5563330/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Whitney Can I Be Me</a>,” chronicle tragic endings. Others enable stars to show their more vulnerable sides while they’re still alive and performing – “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11459366/">Billie Eilish: The World’s A Bit Blurry</a>,” Taylor Swift’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11388580/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Miss Americana</a>” and Lady Gaga’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7291268/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Five Foot Two</a>.” Many of these documentaries complicate their subjects in positive ways, rehabilitating their troubled or entitled images by inserting nuance, empathy and context into their stories, often for the first time. </p>
<h2>A Demi-goddess of the zeitgeist</h2>
<p>Woman pop stars are finally starting to be seen more completely, at least superficially, as documentary filmmakers deliver to evolved and evolving audiences nuanced takes on complicated and aspirational women. </p>
<p>But this momentary opportunity has quickly developed into what can look like a competition for which star can be the most vulnerable.</p>
<p>Demi Lovato, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/demi-lovato-nonbinary-opens-up/">who recently came out as nonbinary</a>, may be winning that distinction with “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12711158/">Dancing With The Devil</a>,” a four-part documentary series that explores their personal and career challenges. In it, they speak candidly about their attempts to recover from an eating disorder, several sexual assaults, drug addiction and a near-death overdose. Lovato also talks about their difficulties coming out as a queer person. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A tour group passes by a quote from Demi Lovato that's affixed to a wall at a drug recovery center." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405502/original/file-20210609-15050-by5bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405502/original/file-20210609-15050-by5bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405502/original/file-20210609-15050-by5bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405502/original/file-20210609-15050-by5bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405502/original/file-20210609-15050-by5bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405502/original/file-20210609-15050-by5bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405502/original/file-20210609-15050-by5bs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demi Lovato has spoken candidly about their struggles with addiction, eating disorders and PTSD.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/tour-group-passes-by-a-wall-quote-by-demi-lovato-at-walden-news-photo/1229183256?adppopup=true">David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These are all important conversations started by feminist, LGBTQ, civil rights and public health activists, but only pop stars such as Lovato have the platforms to launch national and global conversations about them. Their series is bold and moving, and sheds light on the impact of trauma and addiction on the star, their loved ones and their professional team. </p>
<p>What remains to be seen is how the series will impact Lovato’s career. It could strengthen their relationship with their fans, or make fans focus even less on Lovato’s music than they do now, and make Lovato even more vulnerable now that their whole human self is available for public scrutiny. </p>
<p>Lovato, who is now 28, overdosed in 2018, surviving some brutal effects: three strokes, a heart attack and partial blindness. In “<a href="https://www.popbuzz.com/music/artists/demi-lovato/news/anyone-lyrics-meaning-overdose-grammys/">Anyone</a>,” a song recorded days before the overdose, Lovato laments telling “secrets till my voice was sore” because “no one hears me anymore,” “nobody’s listening.” </p>
<p>“I’m on my ninth life,” Lovato said in “Dancing With The Devil,” “and I don’t know how many opportunities I have left.” </p>
<h2>The need for better listening</h2>
<p>For those consuming these films for more than their entertainment value, who thoughtfully engage with the content and internalize its lessons, key questions about existing relationships between artists and fans should be emerging. What are they processing, absorbing and sacrificing for audiences? What can be done to help them negotiate the line between revelation and self-preservation?</p>
<p>In her 2020 book “<a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190902704.001.0001/oso-9780190902704">Call Your ‘Mutha’: A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene</a>,” gender and sexuality scholar Jane Caputi compares the extraction of resources from the land to the enduring damage to bodies and minds caused by sexual violence. In an interview, she told me that the emotional stripping of pop stars enacts “that same paradigm of extraction without reciprocity, of taking what one wants and dumping what one refuses,” with places and peoples reduced to “sacrifice zones.”</p>
<p>While Caputi suggests that this emotional stripping abuse of female pop stars reflects larger patterns of exploitation, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119899008">communication scholar Nancy Baym argues</a> that music “often predicts social change.” If that’s true, maybe the regular exposure of previously taboo subjects such as addiction and sexual abuse could minimize their stigma, and make audiences less drawn to the subjects. </p>
<p>Perhaps then – finally – the musicians’ actual music can be the central focus of their careers.</p>
<p>And while it’s unlikely emotional stripping will stop, the music industry could become more involved in helping these stars survive and thrive. This could range from adding thoughtful and inclusive wellness provisions to artist contracts – including seasoned hazards-of-fame counselors in the standard artist entourage – and teaching fans how to be less reliant on their idols and more emotionally secure themselves. They could also train the parents of young artists on the cusp of fame to be more attuned to signs of distress in their children.</p>
<p>In “<a href="https://genius.com/Justin-bieber-and-benny-blanco-lonely-lyrics">Lonely</a>,” the closing track on Justin Bieber’s new record, he sings: “Everybody saw me sick, and it felt like no one gave a shit.” <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/justin-bieber-cover-profile-may-2021">GQ reported in May 2021</a> that at the peak of Bieber’s fame, his bodyguards would check his pulse as he slept to make sure he was still alive.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Billie Eilish wears a green mask with a sad face sewed into it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405500/original/file-20210609-14971-xo3hdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405500/original/file-20210609-14971-xo3hdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405500/original/file-20210609-14971-xo3hdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405500/original/file-20210609-14971-xo3hdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405500/original/file-20210609-14971-xo3hdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405500/original/file-20210609-14971-xo3hdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405500/original/file-20210609-14971-xo3hdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are the dark undertones in Billie Eilish’s journals and songs a sign of a teenager just being a teenager?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/billie-eilish-prepares-backstage-during-the-daytime-stage-news-photo/1176252019?adppopup=true">Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for iHeartMedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps Bieber’s words could lead his fans and team to consider their complicity.</p>
<p>Despite the positive attention and accolades she receives, Eilish, too, appears to be screaming into the void. In “Bury a Friend” Eilish sings: “Honestly, I thought that I would be dead by now (Wow).” Her notebooks, shown in her documentary, reveal lines like: “I am a void. The epitome of nothing” and “I am going to drink acid.” </p>
<p>Yet at one point in the film, Eilish’s mother, frustrated by people calling Billie’s music “depressing,” notes that Billie’s music isn’t depressing, it’s just that teenagers are depressed. </p>
<p>To me, this lands like denial, gaslighting or both.</p>
<p>“We need a stop gap for artist care,” artist manager Janet Billig-Rich, who managed Nirvana and Hole, among others, told me. “There is a parallel to the Amy Winehouse story where people are saying, ‘At least the parents are there and really involved.’ But they’re on the payroll, too, so there’s a conflict. There need to be people in that inner circle thinking only about the artist’s interest. If we could convince the families and business people to be long-term greedy rather than short-term greedy, the artists would have longer, healthier lifespans and even more lucrative careers.” </p>
<p>Perhaps doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is the best we can hope for from the music business.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161252/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristin J. Lieb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Unloading about trauma and mental illness is in vogue. But like undressing, it centers musicians’ vulnerabilities at the expense of their artistry.Kristin J. Lieb, Associate Professor, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1558302021-02-24T12:42:46Z2021-02-24T12:42:46ZDaft Punk: how the mystery music masterminds used their robot disguise to take over the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385844/original/file-20210223-20-i1b8fm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=37%2C37%2C4912%2C3257&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rome-october-28-daft-punk-attend-190727495">Andrea Raffin/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While Daft Punk’s break-up may have been unexpected, the enigmatic nature in how the public were notified was predictable. Announced via the electronic duo’s YouTube channel, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuDX6wNfjqc">an upload</a> titled Epilogue turned out to be a scene lifted from their 2006 <a href="https://www.factmag.com/2021/02/23/daft-punk-split-up-electroma/">Electroma film</a>, alongside a vocal borrowed from a track on 2013’s Random Access Memories album. </p>
<p>The pivotal desert scene features a prolonged trek by the duo in their instantly recognisable helmets and culminates in one self-destructing while the other walks away. Continuing then what is the pair’s time-honoured preference for ambiguity, it indicates a finale while refraining from disclosing the explicit details. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DuDX6wNfjqc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Over the past 28 years, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (the men behind the helmets) developed a complex and counterintuitive communication strategy. It was an approach that saw the pair hiding behind their alter-egos but going on to conquer the world of electronic music at the same time.</p>
<p>As the more vocal of the two, Bangalter has indicated that this method was fundamental to Daft Punk’s self-preservation. “If you can stay protected and get noticed then it’s all good”, <a href="http://www.daftpunk-anthology.com/dpa/mag-articles/mixmag-2006-07">he told</a> journalist Suzanne Ely in 2006. What began with Bangalter and de Homem-Christo using various masks to hide their discomfort within photoshoots – obscuring rather than projecting a specific image – was eventually resolved when they reinvented themselves as androids. </p>
<h2>Robot rock</h2>
<p>Like the electronic group <a href="http://www.kraftwerk.com/">Kraftwerk</a> before them, these cyborgs further celebrated the electronic, automated characteristics of their music, while at the same time orchestrated a mythology in conjunction with technology’s all-pervasive influence. </p>
<p>Bangalter even presented an <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/wnyekw/daft-punk-birth-of-robots">origins story</a> in which he claimed that the duo’s appearance was the result of an accident. Specifically, that the explosion of an electronic music sampler in 1999 had transformed them into their robot alter egos. Yet alongside this superhero version, Daft Punk also cited the conversion as being their response to fame.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Covers of CDs by Daft Punk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Better to burn out than fade away: Daft Punk announce retirement after nearly 30 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rome-italy-july-29-2019-covers-1470103823">Shutterstock/Kraft74</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/florian-schneider-and-kraftwerk-helped-shape-the-sound-of-modern-music-138187">Florian Schneider and Kraftwerk helped shape the sound of modern music</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>“We don’t believe in the star system,” Bangalter stated. “We want the focus to be on the music. If we have to create an image, it must be an artificial image. That combination hides our physicality and also shows our view of the star system. It is not a compromise.”</p>
<h2>Anti-celebrity superstars</h2>
<p>In this sense, I believe Daft Punk have become an example of an “<a href="http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/50761/">anti-celebrity celebrity</a>”. Yet despite what they might have claimed, with arena tours and cameos in Disney movies, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo were far from being “anonymous”.</p>
<p>Theirs was a stance fraught with contradiction – and one maybe familiar to many working in arts and culture who find their rejection of consumer culture operating within the same <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGJy822geAg">market-driven constraints</a>. In Daft Punk’s case, it resulted in often uneasy relationships such as the robots’ involvement in <a href="http://soundidentity.com/the-neverending-story-between-daft-punk-and-tv-commercials/?lang=en">global advertising campaigns</a>, and many Daft Punk interviews issued by media outlets that repeatedly assured us that they <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/doublej/music-reads/features/daft-punk-feature/13182412">rarely give interviews</a>. </p>
<p>The pair’s press engagement has been particularly cultivated to maintain this “media reluctance” narrative. And it became a mutually beneficial arrangement, perpetuating Daft Punk’s anti-stardom position while also enabling publications to claim they had an exclusive. </p>
<h2>Got lucky?</h2>
<p>For an audience that may similarly be suspicious of media saturation – and what it can indicate in terms of “selling out” – this notion of Daft Punk’s interaction being rare, intimate and indifferent to the supposed demands of industry may also have been attractive. </p>
<p>Perhaps French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu had it right when he said that profits can be derived from “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23266041?seq=1">disinterestedness</a>”. Indeed Daft Punk’s marketing succeeded because of its highlighted rejection of the most obvious, unromantic mechanisms of commerce.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5NV6Rdv1a3I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The Epilogue video message is then a fitting end, highlighting remoteness and attachment, anonymity and familiarity, and all delivered by a self-destructing robot with no accompanying press release. It aptly concludes Daft Punk’s legacy of technology-assisted public engagement. Over and out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155830/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Cookney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Daft Punk’s anonymity was really a stroke of genius.Daniel Cookney, Lecturer in Graphic Design, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1541642021-02-03T13:11:59Z2021-02-03T13:11:59ZWhat The Weeknd’s changing face says about our sick celebrity culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381792/original/file-20210201-17-1r6aoeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=103%2C1%2C1101%2C716&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Weeknd performs at the 2020 American Music Awards on Nov. 22 in Los Angeles.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-screengrab-released-on-november-22-the-weeknd-news-photo/1287129877?adppopup=true">AMA2020 via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You might have seen The Weeknd’s altered face on the internet lately – either bloodied and covered in bandages or transformed by faux plastic surgery. With the 30-year-old singer <a href="https://www.nfl.com/super-bowl/halftime-show">set to perform at the Super Bowl LV halftime show</a> on Feb. 7, it’ll be interesting to see whether he continues the act before hundreds of millions of viewers.</p>
<p>The changes to The Weeknd’s face didn’t simply appear overnight. </p>
<p>Rather, they surfaced as a slow crescendo, as notes in a larger arrangement.</p>
<p>Initially, there were facial bruises at the end of his “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NRXx6U8ABQ">Blinding Lights</a>” music video, in which an all-night bender ends in a car accident. He sported a bandaged nose for performances on “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYpyC1SNPc">Jimmy Kimmel Live</a>” in January 2020 and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17GxpgE-Fwo">Saturday Night Live</a>” in March 2020. Later that March, the bloodied nose and lips appeared <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c1/The_Weeknd_-_After_Hours.png">on the cover</a> of “After Hours,” his most recent album.</p>
<p>He took the performance a step further at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-g_SHNv5NI">2020 American Music Awards</a>, showing up with his whole head covered in bandages, which <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/1843099/the-weeknd-face-mask-bandages-amas-2020/">worried some fans</a> who assumed the they were real. When those bandages came off for the “Save Your Tears” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXYlFuWEuKI">music video</a>, a face disfigured by excessive plastic surgery was revealed – a carefully constructed visage created using makeup and prostheses that made him nearly unrecognizable.</p>
<p>As an anthropologist who has been analyzing <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520293885/the-biopolitics-of-beauty">the societal implications of plastic surgery</a> for over 15 years, I was struck by The Weeknd’s use of this medical practice.</p>
<p>What, I wondered, was he trying to say?</p>
<p>Initially, I’d assumed the bruises and bandages were a metaphor for The Weeknd’s struggle with drug addiction, <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/6663161/weeknd-lana-del-rey-songs-about-drugs-pop-radio-analysis">a topic he has long explored in his music</a>. He’s noted that, when scripting his music videos for “After Hours,” <a href="https://www.crfashionbook.com/mens/a34877992/the-weeknd-change-outfit/">he was inspired</a> by the film “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” in which writer Hunter S. Thompson, played by Johnny Depp, often hallucinates or spirals out of control. </p>
<p>However, another key emerges in the videos from the “After Hours” album. In all the videos, people are constantly watching him, whether it’s the crowd of stiff, masked fans in the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXYlFuWEuKI">Save Your Tears</a>” music video or the frantic crowd reaching out to grab him as he tries to escape at the end of “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i58MNnk6BhY">Until I Bleed Out</a>.” </p>
<p>In both cases, he seems to be comparing fandom to an unsettling loss of privacy, one where his very safety is at stake. It’s not that he fears his fans will hurt him. It’s more a commentary on how his celebrity status makes him vulnerable to a prying gaze at all times.</p>
<p>In his most violent music video to date – for the song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh8DT09QCHI">Too Late</a>” – the themes of plastic surgery and fandom collide. Two wealthy white women with bandaged heads find his severed head and swoon over it, before deciding to murder a Black male stripper so they can attach The Weeknd’s head onto that muscular body. </p>
<p>The racial dynamics of the video are hard to miss: The women seem to exoticize Blackness and reduce the body parts of two Black men to objects that give them pleasure.</p>
<p>People love musical performances – or art, more generally – because it’s pleasurable to soak in the talented work of other people. </p>
<p>In the celebrity culture of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/late-capitalism/524943/">late capitalism</a>, however, artists are finding it more and more difficult to separate themselves from their art: The show continues after the work has been published or the performance has concluded. Fans feel entitled to access all aspects of their personal lives – even their bodies.</p>
<p>Communication scholar P. David Marshall <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/celebrity-and-power">has written about</a> the ways in which the public assumes celebrities are automatically open to – or deserving of – scrutiny thanks to their fame. When their privacy is invaded, it’s simply shrugged off as coming with the territory.</p>
<p>Some celebrities, like the Kardashians, <a href="https://www.instyle.com/celebrity/kim-kardashian-makes-more-money-on-instagram-than-kuwtk">lean into it</a>. They’re willing to expose themselves in increasingly invasive ways – whether it’s through social media or reality television – because they want to exploit the symbiotic relationship between media exposure, wealth and power. </p>
<p>But other celebrities, like <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/09/lady-gaga-hated-being-famous">Lady Gaga</a>, have been forthright about the ways in which fame has harmed their mental health. Musicians like <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329500971/a-reluctant-star-sia-deals-with-fame-on-her-own-terms">Sia</a> and <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/why-daft-punk-wear-helmets-182716/">Daft Punk</a> have gone to great lengths to hide their faces and protect their privacy, making it part of their act. </p>
<p>By using bandages and prostheses to hide his face, perhaps The Weeknd is also telling us that parts of his life are off limits – and should stay that way.</p>
<p>The Weeknd also seems to be acknowledging the immense pressures that celebrities feel to conform to unrealistic beauty standards. Celebrity journalism can be particularly cruel when famous people fail to measure up, with the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/04/shooting-britney/306735/">paparazzi making a fortune off pictures that demonstrate celebrities as vulnerable or imperfect</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">Get The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Feminist and literary scholar Virginia Blum <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520244733/flesh-wounds">has written about</a> how celebrities are admired for their ability to transform and beautify themselves, and yet they also become canvases for harsh critique when it seems they’ve gone too far with plastic surgery or have aged ungracefully. </p>
<p>For celebrities, it can sometimes seem that there’s no pleasing anyone. By making those concerns with superficial beauty part of his art, The Weeknd seems to throw that mirror back at his listeners, asking them to reflect on the irrelevance of his appearance to his craft.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154164/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alvaro Jarrin's research on plastic surgery was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.</span></em></p>Over the past year, the singer has carefully constructed a visage that has made him nearly unrecognizable.Carmen Alvaro Jarrin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1472572020-10-14T01:01:56Z2020-10-14T01:01:56ZCobra Kai, Bill & Ted: comebacks redefine middle-aged masculinity, but where are the women?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362843/original/file-20201012-23-193no9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=571%2C2%2C1113%2C871&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dad bods abound in the Karate Kid reboot. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are certain film roles that can define an actor’s career. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001494/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Ralph Macchio</a> has starred in over 25 films, yet he is most identifiable as the teenage Danny Larouso in The Karate Kid (1984). Similarly, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0935664/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Alex Winter</a> has had a long career as a director and actor, but is best known as high school student Bill S. Preston, Esquire in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989). </p>
<p>The recent popularity and role reprisals by these actors: Winter in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1086064/?ref_=nm_knf_t1">Bill & Ted Face the Music</a> (2020) and Macchio in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7221388/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Cobra Kai</a> (2018–), combined with <a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2552760/brad-pitt-and-jennifer-aniston-will-reunite-for-an-unexpected-project">celebrities reading aloud the scripts of old teen film classics via Zoom</a> suggests nostalgia. It is also an opportunity to revisit and consider the nuances of characters and gender roles with greater maturity and a wiser perspective.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bill-and-ted-face-the-music-review-party-on-dudes-this-film-is-as-sweet-and-daggy-as-its-predecessors-144074">Bill & Ted Face the Music review: party on, dudes - this film is as sweet and daggy as its predecessors</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Dads today</h2>
<p>Generation X, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/">born 1965–1980</a>, were in their adolescence when these two films premiered. Both movies present a version of teenage masculinity that was in remarkable contrast to male adult roles in action films of that time. In the 1980s, tough muscular bodies were pictured on screen in films such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083944/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Rambo</a> (1982, 1985, 1988), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082198/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_68">Conan the Barbarian</a> (1982), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092675/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Bloodsport</a> (1988), and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095016/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Die Hard</a> (1988). </p>
<p>While the young male protagonists in The Karate Kid and Bill & Ted possess purposeful strength, they display a vulnerability, a gentle resilience, a sense of humour with suburban heroism. (Indeed nerd teen archetypes meet tough jocks in detention in 1985’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/">The Breakfast Club</a>.)</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362844/original/file-20201012-23-q3n670.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Young actors in Bill and Ted movies scene." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362844/original/file-20201012-23-q3n670.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362844/original/file-20201012-23-q3n670.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362844/original/file-20201012-23-q3n670.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362844/original/file-20201012-23-q3n670.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362844/original/file-20201012-23-q3n670.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362844/original/file-20201012-23-q3n670.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362844/original/file-20201012-23-q3n670.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Though he hasn’t had the screen success of his old pal Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter has continued to work in movies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0935664/mediaviewer/rm152513024">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their hero’s journey is relatable yet undeniably epic. The films depict the story of the underdog, of young males who don’t quite fit into the mould and, significantly, are fine with this.</p>
<p>There is a desire to learn, whether from history, as in Bill & Ted, or from older characters sharing their wisdom, as in The Karate Kid. Accordingly, the phrase “wax on, wax off” became popular shorthand for a stern lesson in patience and skill development. </p>
<p>Now, as the characters return to our screens older and in the 21st century, there are still lessons to be learnt.</p>
<p>Rather than entering a mid-life crisis — popularly depicted with older males seeking renewed vigour in the embrace of young mistresses or new sports cars — these middle-aged characters convey the opportunity to relive, redo and revisit past triumphs. </p>
<p>The role reprise is also an opportunity to transform the tribulations of the past. Indeed, Cobra Kai is more focussed on Macchio’s onscreen karate opponent, Johnny Lawrence, played by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0951420/?ref_=tt_cl_t6">William Zabka</a>. Now a “deadbeat dad”, Johnny reboots the Cobra Kai dojo and his sense of purpose. </p>
<p>As adult characters, now husbands and fathers, the midlife narrative can navigate an updated definition of masculinity. They may be comeback dudes, but they are also dads. In both the new Bill & Ted movie and the Cobra Kai TV series, the characters’ children have the opportunity to actualise the dreams of their fathers. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MLpyi-oVoIY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Character revivals provide a chance for a ‘do-over’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-we-find-it-so-hard-to-move-on-from-the-80s-59445">Why do we find it so hard to move on from the 80s?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Be excellent’ but it’s also complicated</h2>
<p>The 1980s films challenge toxic masculinity. The teen protagonists are undeniably nice, likeable guys who try to do the right thing. Bill and Ted are guided by a moral imperative to “be excellent to each other”.</p>
<p>The famous quote summarises a positive life mantra and shows how good and bad are clearly defined in the original films. The middle aged comeback vehicles show a more mature understanding of the moral complexities of life.</p>
<p>In reprising their roles, the notion that Macchio, Zabka and Winters have aged does not act as a hindrance but a point of identification for Generation X audiences. There is a strong connection to viewers’ own past lives. Seeing the actors again on screen is akin to seeing long lost friends at a high school reunion. </p>
<p>Macchio and Zabka remind us of the high school tensions that are painfully never quite resolved. Seeing Winter with Keanu Reaves’ Ted provides a joyous reminder of the strong bonds of same-sex friendships of our youth. And like a high school reunion there is a lot of reminiscing about the way things were compared to what life is like now. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DskTb6nYq98?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Turns out everyone got older.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-new-seachange-is-a-sad-case-of-zombie-tv-when-your-favourite-programs-come-back-from-the-dead-123162">The new Seachange is a sad case of Zombie TV: when your favourite programs come back from the dead</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What about the comeback mothers?</h2>
<p>Significantly, there are fewer female role revivals to remind us of the character growth related to womanhood. </p>
<p>Iconic teenage female actors seem more likely to have comebacks in supporting roles as mothers, rather than as the protagonists.</p>
<p>Examples here are Molly Ringwald in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1179817/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_6">The Secret Life of an American Teenager</a> (2008-2013), Holly Marie Combs in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1578873/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Pretty Little Liars</a> (2010-2017) and Winona Ryder in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4574334/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Stranger Things</a> (2016-). </p>
<p>Perhaps the current success of Bill and Ted, and Cobra Kai, could see Molly Ringwald’s iconic role in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088128/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Sixteen Candles</a> (1984) remade as Fifty-two Candles? Similarly, is it time for an update of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250494/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Legally Blonde</a> (2001) to Legally Grey?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362882/original/file-20201012-19-diac2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman looks shocked" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362882/original/file-20201012-19-diac2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362882/original/file-20201012-19-diac2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362882/original/file-20201012-19-diac2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362882/original/file-20201012-19-diac2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362882/original/file-20201012-19-diac2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362882/original/file-20201012-19-diac2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362882/original/file-20201012-19-diac2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">While comeback dads get to fulfill their destinies, comeback mums — like Winona Ryder in Stranger Things — return in a supporting role.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147257/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Panizza Allmark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The return of actors like Karate Kid Ralph Macchio and Bill & Ted’s Alex Winter sees them older and wiser. Fewer role revivals remind us of character growth related to womanhood.Panizza Allmark, Associate Dean of Arts, Associate Professor Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1393592020-07-14T15:23:34Z2020-07-14T15:23:34ZCelebrity views on COVID-19 aren’t welcome — except when drawing attention to heroes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346912/original/file-20200710-26-1ns2jjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C1832%2C898&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Julia Roberts interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci for a non-profit organization. Here, Roberts, left, at an Obama Foundation event in December 2019, and Fauci, right, in Washington on June 23. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Vincent Thian and Sarah Silbiger/Pool via AP) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 1, the One Campaign, a global anti-poverty organization <a href="https://www.one.org/us/person/bono/">co-founded by uber-celebrity-activist Bono</a>, announced that its <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ONE/posts/10157714157549472">#PassTheMic campaign had ended successfully</a>. Over the past two months, celebrities teamed up for online discussions about COVID-19 with scientific experts who were then invited to take over their social media accounts. In so doing, they leveraged the attention-getting cultural power of celebrity to circulate reliable information about the pandemic. </p>
<p>Julia Roberts went first, with a widely viewed <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/entertainment/julia-roberts-fauci-passthemic/index.html">and publicized discussion</a> with the man she <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/05/julia-roberts-dr-fauci-interview">called a “personal hero”</a>: Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, arguably <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/07/11/why-fauci-not-on-tv-ebof-vpx-new.cnn/video/playlists/coronavirus/">a celebrity in his own right</a>. But most of the guests hosted were not household names.</p>
<p>Celebrities, who are defined by their hoarding of cultural attention, are only effective or welcome in the current global health crisis, it would appear, when they forgo their attention-seeking natures and instead direct the spotlight elsewhere.</p>
<p>We saw this early in the pandemic when some celebrities tried to comment on the crisis in their usual, attention-getting ways — and failed. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Oaba1Ckcj30?wmode=transparent&start=16" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Julia Roberts interviews Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Painful video</h2>
<p>As a scholar who has spent years studying the cultural politics of celebrity, I can pinpoint when the broader public began to turn on celebrities during the pandemic and derided them.</p>
<p>It was March 18, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/us/coronavirus-college-campus-closings.html">not long after most</a> <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/15/coronavirus-live-updates-asia-europe-impact.html">of the United States</a> had shut down. Actor Gal Gadot turned on a camera, sighed over being a whole six days in isolation, and began to sing the first line of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The camera then cut to a sequence of celebrity friends (Kristen Wiig, Mark Ruffalo, Jimmy Fallon …. ) each singing a line of the song from their various socially isolated locations. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/tv/B95M4kNhbzz","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Jon Caramanica, pop music critic at the <em>New York Times</em>, panned the performance for being full of “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/arts/music/coronavirus-gal-gadot-imagine.html">smug self-satisfaction</a>,” as well as for its lack of musicality. He tartly observed: “It is proof that even if no one meets up in person, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/arts/music/coronavirus-gal-gadot-imagine.html">horribleness can spread</a>.”</p>
<p>The video prompted a series of stories asking whether the coronavirus had “shattered our <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/may/02/theres-a-sense-that-celebrities-are-irrelevant-has-coronavirus-shattered-our-fame-obsession">fame obsession</a>” and identifying the “other COVID-19 outbreak: loopy celebrity <a href="https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/opinion/2020/03/24/the-other-covid-19-outbreak-loopy-celebrity-quarantine-videos.html">quarantine videos</a>.” </p>
<p>Madonna, a few days later, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/madonna-covid-19-bathtub-rant-971124/">gave media analysts</a> and consumers fresh material for derision when she took to her petal-strewn, candle-encircled bath to tell us that coronavirus is “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UYU4Slh34I">the great equalizer</a>.” </p>
<h2>Just like us?</h2>
<p>It’s worth looking at why these videos fell so flat and struck a sour note both politically and musically. Such efforts failed to balance their privileged status with performed “ordinariness” that has been at the heart of celebrity representations of self <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/stars-9780851706436/">for many years</a>. </p>
<p>Maintaining celebrity is often a matter of projecting an air of ordinariness that might legitimize the star’s special status by pleading that they are, after all, “just like us.” </p>
<p>But the spectacle of wealthy celebrities performing a song that exhorts us to “imagine no possessions,” while not making any demonstrable material contribution to the fight against COVID-19, struck many <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/fans-react-gal-gadot-imagine-john-lennon-coronavirus-donate-money-a9410621.html">viewers as vainly self-serving and desperately out of touch with the struggles of many people</a>.</p>
<p>The balancing of ordinariness and privilege has always been a fragile act of public relations. When the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-hollywood-studio-system-9781844570645/">Hollywood studio system</a> was in full sway, publicity departments were aware of the power of ordinariness. For example, publicists let it be known that child star Judy Garland loved playing baseball, and they <a href="https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/judy-garland-1935-5859988a">produced photographs to support</a> this evidence of healthy, ordinary American girlhood. But <a href="https://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/judy-garland-on-judy-garland-products-9781613749456.php?page_id=21">Garland’s childhood, as we now know, was far from ordinary or healthy</a>. </p>
<p>More recently, stars or their publicists perform this ordinariness through social media, but the public’s approval hangs in a precarious balance. Julia Roberts’s conversation with Fauci avoids the “Imagine” effect partly because it is directed to specific beneficial actions. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CAdJSOMHdBj","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>After 9/11</h2>
<p>But we have been here before: in the days following 9/11, celebrity came under renewed scrutiny and even derision. </p>
<p>As the Australian celebrity studies scholar David Marshall recalls, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19392390903519057">after the Twin Towers fell, there followed a month of “the new sobriety,”</a> during which “celebrity represented everything that was excessively insignificant,” but it amounted to little more than a “temporary chastising blip.”</p>
<p>When challenges like this confront the celebrity system, like most systems, it adapts. </p>
<p>In the days following 9/11, Marshall notes, stars like George Clooney and Tom Hanks publicly praised first responders, whom they characterized as the real stars. Clooney <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=mgtSLkKxIpEC&q=Clooney#v=snippet&q=Clooney&f=false">was part of organizing the “America: Tribute to Heroes” fundraising concert</a> and Hanks, speaking at it, declared, speaking of himself and other celebrity artists: “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=102292&page=1">Those of us here tonight are not heroes</a>.” </p>
<p>This is the performative mode that I call “<a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319711737">reluctant celebrity</a>,” when the celebrity expresses a disinclination to be a highly visible public individual, <a href="https://www.americanwaterways.com/media/videos/boatlift-tom-hanks-narrates-untold-tale-911-resilience">turning attention elsewhere</a> as a means of, paradoxically, hanging on to that public visibility. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R15uLXHqMyo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Neil Young performs John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ at ‘A Tribute to Heroes’ concert in 2001.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And to a great degree, in America post-9/11, it worked. </p>
<p>But now? Things are different. </p>
<h2>In this together?</h2>
<p>The virus has discredited the primary narrative: “We are all in this together.” That narrative was more convincing to many Americans in the autumn of 2001, even though that crisis exacerbated social inequity, particularly for American Muslims: in 2016, public health research reported that <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055770">hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. were five times more common than before 9/11</a>. </p>
<p>Still, a broad audience could find Neil Young’s performance of “Imagine” at the “America: Tribute to Heroes” concert in 2001 appropriate and moving, given how its lyrics readily suggested a call to reject racist and violent responses to the attacks. </p>
<p>Today, the COVID-19 pandemic has patently displayed inequity, and each week brings fresh accounts of how <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pandemic-covid-coronavirus-cerb-unemployment-1.5610404">lower-income people and Black and racialized communities</a> have been disproportionately impacted by the virus in the U.S. and Canada. This is why Gadot’s reflection in the “Imagine” video, “doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, we’re all in this together,” falls flat. “Imagine” is, at this moment, a drastically inappropriate choice.</p>
<h2>Reinforcing currency</h2>
<p>Which brings us back to Julia Roberts and #PassTheMic. When celebrities perform a modest reluctance and a generous sharing of public attention, they reinforce their own currency and importance. </p>
<p>By (seemingly) stepping aside, celebrities reveal their capacity to reoccupy the centres of cultural space. </p>
<p>Celebrity may be unserious in so many ways, but it’s worth taking our responses to it at moments like these seriously. They have much to teach us about how we are processing, however messily, crucial issues of equity and collective well-being.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139359/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lorraine York receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)</span></em></p>Just like in the days following 9/11, celebrities most successfully use their star power in the COVID-19 crisis when they appear to step out of the limelight, publicly praising first responders.Lorraine York, Distinguished University Professor, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1412782020-06-23T07:53:26Z2020-06-23T07:53:26ZVale Joel Schumacher – the Hollywood legend who brought us brat packs, teen vampires and Falling Down<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343431/original/file-20200623-188886-1pi70kw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C6%2C1481%2C989&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjA2NTQ0MTc1OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNDY4NjYzNQ@@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,1502,1000_AL_.jpg">Tigerland/IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001708/?ref_=rg_mv">Joel Schumacher</a>, <a href="https://variety.com/2020/film/news/joel-schumacher-dead-dies-batman-director-1234644961/">who has died aged 80 in New York</a>, never won an Oscar. </p>
<p>He <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=V0w_DQAAQBAJ&lpg=PT390&ots=SdAoh85IzT&dq=began%20drinking%20aged%20nine%20joel%20schumacher&pg=PT390#v=onepage&q=began%20drinking%20aged%20nine%20joel%20schumacher&f=false">began drinking</a> aged nine and spent the last years of his life apologising for having made <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118688/?ref_=nm_knf_t2">Batman and Robin</a> (1997). He was once described in <a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2000/10/03/falling-down/">The Village Voice</a> as a “well-oiled toxic-waste machine”. </p>
<p>And yet Schumacher’s body of work is profound, and his influence on contemporary Hollywood cinema indelible. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1275145885815627776"}"></div></p>
<h2>Hitmaker</h2>
<p>A glance at his back catalogue is testament to his talent, range, and his innate ability to spot a hit movie. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0155711/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_15">Flawless</a> (1999), he coaxed mighty performances from Robert de Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman. He introduced the world to Matthew McConaughey in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117913/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_18">A Time to Kill</a> (1996), Colin Farrell in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0170691/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Tigerland</a> (2000) and Joaquin Phoenix (previously credited as Leaf Phoenix) in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134273/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">8mm</a> (1999). </p>
<p>Cate Blanchett has rarely been better in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312549/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_11">Veronica Guerin</a> (2003), nor Julia Roberts in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099582/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_26">Flatliners</a> (1990) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101787/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_25">Dying Young</a> (1991).</p>
<p>To understand Schumacher’s vast contribution, we need to go back to the start of his extraordinarily eclectic career, and his costume designs for Woody Allen’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Sleeper</a> (1973). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/seams-dreams-the-hands-behind-classic-hollywood-costumes-34707">Seams, dreams: the hands behind classic Hollywood costumes</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A sci-fi caper, in which Allen’s character awakens 200 years in the future and gets involved in bringing down a police state, is now largely overlooked, but Schumacher’s costumes remain unforgettable: inflatable onesies, the tuxedos topped with metal hats. </p>
<p>Here was someone with a sense of humour, sensitive to the camp excesses of genre cinema, and to how films might subvert and entertain in equal measure. This touch would serve Schumacher well – he went on to tap into longstanding entertainment trends like 70s disco, 80s Brat Pack and 90s “event” films.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343432/original/file-20200623-188911-1eiys12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343432/original/file-20200623-188911-1eiys12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343432/original/file-20200623-188911-1eiys12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343432/original/file-20200623-188911-1eiys12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343432/original/file-20200623-188911-1eiys12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343432/original/file-20200623-188911-1eiys12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343432/original/file-20200623-188911-1eiys12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343432/original/file-20200623-188911-1eiys12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Schumacher started out as a costume designer, working on Woody Allen’s Sleeper.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Talent spotter</h2>
<p>He shifted to screenwriting, penning the blue-collar musical <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074281/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Car Wash</a> (1976) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078504/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2">The Wiz</a> (1978), Sidney Lumet’s raucous Motown update of The Wizard of Oz, with Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow and Diana Ross as Dorothy. </p>
<p>It wasn’t long before he moved behind the camera, debuting <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082558/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1">The Incredible Shrinking Woman</a> (1981) with Lily Tomlin. It received a rave review from critic Roger Ebert, and kickstarted a two-decade string of commercial success.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YeOsjN5cZWo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘A woman who gave so much, and got so little.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>1985’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090060/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">St Elmo’s Fire</a> set down the template for American coming-of-age dramas, full of characters struggling to adapt to post-college lives of responsibility and conformity. </p>
<p>Schumacher tweaked that formula two years’ later in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093437/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Lost Boys</a>, another coming-of-age tale, only this time with vampires in sunny California. It is easy to forget the film’s immense cultural impact: it brought vampires into the Hollywood mainstream years before Buffy and the Twilight series. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r1Iqy6m7U7c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Teen vampires, years before Buffy and Twilight.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The cast for the two hit films included Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim. One of Schumacher’s most important contributions will remain his extraordinary ability to spot talent. </p>
<p>In the crowded early-80s film scene, stars were discovered via TV roles or moved westward from New York theatre and Schumacher’s casting nous was exemplary. Names like Keifer Sutherland, Ally Sheedy and Rob Lowe form the Rosetta Stone of 1980s American movie culture, and Schumacher fought hard to cast them all.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1275139392915402752"}"></div></p>
<h2>And then there was Batman</h2>
<p>Film history is full of directors who shuttled across assignments, content not to leave any discernable authorial “mark”, but simply just to work, to pay bills, to collaborate with fresh-faced actors, to explore new forms. Schumacher is part of that exalted company. </p>
<p>Tigerland was shot in less than four weeks, and is now regarded as one of the most searing depictions of the Vietnam War. Schumacher’s adaptations of John Grisham’s The Client (1994) and A Time to Kill (1996) are benchmarks of novel-to-film transitions and foregrounded his ability to weave complex, multi-character stories in a brisk, non-ostentatious manner. </p>
<p>Even later films, such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293508/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Phantom of the Opera</a> (2004) and the Jim Carrey vehicle <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0481369/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Number 23</a> (2007) blend showmanship, schlock and glitz-and-glamour. Schumacher thus fits neatly alongside contemporaries such as Ivan Reitman and Rob Reiner. He flitted nimble from genre to genre, but he was no hack.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4RBXypX4qWI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">He was really sorry. Really he was.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And then there is Batman. To look at <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112462/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Batman Forever</a> (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997) now is like peering through a cracked kaleidoscope. What were they thinking? </p>
<p>Nowadays, Batman is Christian Bale, broodingly directed by Christopher Nolan, weighed down with existential angst. But Schumacher’s versions – both enormous box-office hits at the time, despite the critical brickbats – arguably do something with the Batman extended universe that neither Tim Burton before, nor Nolan and Zack Snyder afterwards, were prepared to countenance: make them fun. </p>
<p>These are garish, hyperactive superhero films, full of fridge-magnet colour schemes and camp villains (Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, Tommy Lee Jones as Two Face). Schumacher replicates the kapow-shazam goofiness of the 1960s Batman TV series in a knowing way. </p>
<p>Realising he had been hired by Warner Brothers to shift the franchise in a more child-friendly direction, Schumacher duly obliged, and spent the rest of his career <a href="https://screenrant.com/joel-schumacher-apologizes-batman-robin/">issuing mea culpas</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-jokers-origin-story-comes-at-a-perfect-moment-clowns-define-our-times-123009">The Joker’s origin story comes at a perfect moment: clowns define our times</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Roll credits</h2>
<p>There was the inevitable tailing off, as there always is with directors who become unwell, or who find themselves out of step with the financial demands of billionaire studio conglomerates. But still he kept working. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183649/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Phone Booth</a> (2002) was as high-concept as anything Hollywood commissioned at the time – what would you do if you were trapped in a street-corner telephone booth, with an assassin’s gun trained on you?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XkwQ6EjLdMQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘We stopped serving breakfast at 11.30.’ Oh no, they didn’t.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps it’s most fitting to remember him by reflecting on <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Falling Down</a> (1993), with Michael Douglas as a recently fired defence worker who becomes a one-man vigilante after escaping a Los Angeles traffic jam. The film feels both of its time (Schumacher began filming the day the LA Riots broke out) and overwhelmingly modern. </p>
<p>Schumacher once <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2020/06/joel-schumacher-in-conversation.html">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s very hard to realise you have a calling and realise you’re not gifted. I wanted to be a director all my life, and when I finally got the chance, I was so miserably untalented. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>When we reflect on his contribution to modern cinema, we see how wrong he was.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141278/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben McCann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Movie director Joel Schumacher’s body of work is profound, and his influence on contemporary Hollywood cinema indelible.Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1325162020-06-18T20:05:15Z2020-06-18T20:05:15ZFriday essay: training a new generation of performers about intimacy, safety and creativity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340839/original/file-20200610-34696-tptqz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C7%2C1755%2C978&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNjdlOWYwZjYtMmE5Mi00NGRkLTk1YmYtMGY5ODYyZjExYjkzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTMxMTUxNDI@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,999_AL_.jpg">Normal People/IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his surprisingly dark and often shocking account of life at a New York performing arts school, Alan Parker’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080716/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Fame</a> (1980) exposes the way youthful exuberance and vulnerability are easy prey for those who manipulate and abuse their position. </p>
<p>The fim depicts public humiliation, shaming, racism, attempted suicide, drug abuse and homophobia. But perhaps the most horrific sequence is when aspiring actress Coco (played by Irene Cara) is preyed on by a sleazy filmmaker. She turns up for a sham screen test and is coerced into removing her blouse. </p>
<p>“You’re acting like a dumb school kid … I thought you were a professional,” the older man cajoles as he manipulates her inexperience to achieve his own ends. The film’s narrative treats such behaviours as the inevitable reality of a highly competitive and hierarchical working environment. </p>
<p>“Performers aren’t safe,” declares one of Coco’s fellow students shortly after her trauma. “We’re the pie in the face people remember.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i4mkRwkQRoQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Fame exquisitely captured the vulnerability of creative students in 1980.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Forty years since Fame hit screens, in the wake of the #MeToo movement and as we <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/no-sex-please-were-skittish-film-and-television-enter-postvirus-world/news-story/3ce672203499d543e244b2543a2d2a52">emerge from COVID-19 physical distancing measures</a>, there is still more that can be done to protect those seeking to pursue careers in the performing arts. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-stand-so-close-to-me-understanding-consent-can-help-with-those-tricky-social-distancing-moments-139293">Don't stand so close to me – understanding consent can help with those tricky social distancing moments</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Harrassment and power</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/acting-unpleasantly-why-harassment-is-so-common-in-the-theatre-87374">High-profile cases</a> in the industry as well as more recent <a href="https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2018/third-performing-arts-students-sexually-harassed-survey/">incidents</a> in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/15/education-sector-yet-learn-lessons-metoo-critics-say">training sector</a> locate sexual harassment and exploitation within hierarchical power structures that provide a fertile breeding ground for abuse. </p>
<p>Within the context of performer training, the blurred boundaries between personal and professional modes of communication – together with a tendency to confuse the need for “professional discipline” with “passive obedience” – produces an atmosphere of uncertainty and self-doubt. Students can feel completely disempowered. </p>
<p>While abusive behaviours are by no means exclusive to the entertainment industry or performing arts education, traditional power structures and outmoded values provide a natural home for offenders.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://www.ism.org/images/images/Equity-ISM-MU-Dignity-in-Study-report.pdf">British Dignity in Study</a> survey conducted of 600 students at
specialist drama schools, music colleges, conservatoires,
dance colleges and universities in 2018, a staggering 57% had experienced inappropriate behaviour. And 57% of those students did not report the behaviour. </p>
<p>Some perceived it as “culturally acceptable”; others feared the perpetrator or reputational damage. Of the students who did report concerns, 48% remained dissatisfied with the outcome and 79% of this group indicated no corrective action was taken.</p>
<p>If the situation in the UK feels alarming, then that in Australia offers <a href="https://witnessperformance.com/luckily-i-had-a-breakdown-sexual-harassment-in-australian-performing-arts/">little evidence to the contrary</a>. </p>
<p>Performer Candy Bowers has written about <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/voices/culture/article/2018/11/13/australian-theatre-we-have-problem">sexually abusive behaviour</a> as a student. When she reported the incident – unwanted comments about her body by an older man who then forcibly tongue-kissed her onstage without consent – her tutors urged to “get used to it, stop being so sensitive, toughen up”, and even to “take it as a compliment”.</p>
<h2>Inside the actors’ studio</h2>
<p>A number of professional organisations and training institutions have developed detailed codes to confront the issues faced, notably <a href="https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com:443/89c218af-4a5a-00a2-9d83-3913048b3bc7/8aed35e5-c92c-4096-a89d-b2343c6ce0c3/1.%20Screen%20Industry%20Code%20of%20Practice.pdf">Screen Producers Australia</a>, the <a href="https://royalcourttheatre.com/code-of-behaviour/">Royal Court Theatre in the UK</a> and the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/policies/showdoc.aspx?recnum=PDOC2018/470&RendNum=0">University of Sydney</a>. But little work has been done to develop practice-based, experiential approaches to enable and empower the most vulnerable. </p>
<p>Training institutions have tried to communicate standards via lectures, handouts, and pre-rehearsal briefing sessions. </p>
<p>Reams of detailed legal documentation or standardised presentations may reassure institutions they’ve met their duty of care obligations – but how many 18-21-year-old dancers, singers, actors or technicians will actually take the time to fully engage with or read through a litany of complex clauses or phrases, let alone understand them? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342335/original/file-20200617-94101-17q94qr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342335/original/file-20200617-94101-17q94qr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342335/original/file-20200617-94101-17q94qr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342335/original/file-20200617-94101-17q94qr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342335/original/file-20200617-94101-17q94qr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342335/original/file-20200617-94101-17q94qr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342335/original/file-20200617-94101-17q94qr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342335/original/file-20200617-94101-17q94qr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Performing arts students have unique tools at their disposal for exploring uncomfortable terrain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMWZhYmY2ZGMtY2NmMC00OWU2LThkZmItZDZjNmViOTA3OGZmXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjc5Mjg0NjU@._V1_.jpg">Rise/IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If we are genuinely to change the pervading culture, alternative strategies are needed. These strategies should not be solely dependent on intellectual processes, but also engage physicality and the use of gesture, the senses, and emotional intelligence. Sexual harassment, objectification, bullying, humiliation, homophobia and racism are all forms of oppression to be addressed in real, not academic, terms.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/acting-unpleasantly-why-harassment-is-so-common-in-the-theatre-87374">Acting unpleasantly: why harassment is so common in the theatre</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Empowering change</h2>
<p>Acclaimed Brazilian theatre practitioner <a href="http://augustoboal-oppression.weebly.com/biography.html">Augusto Boal</a> developed forms of theatre practice to bring about social and political change. </p>
<p>Known as the <a href="http://www.actingnow.co.uk/what-is-theatre-of-the-oppressed/#:%7E:text=The%20Theatre%20of%20the%20Oppressed,the%201950'ps%20and%201960's.&text=From%20his%20work%20Boal%20evolved,thinking%2C%20action%2C%20and%20fun.">Theatre of the Oppressed</a>, the technique utilises live facilitation, imagery, dialogue and role play to empower communities and find solutions to social problems, such as homophobia. </p>
<p>Using this kind of approach to illustrate, unpick and interrogate the hierarchical structures in our training institutions – between those who have status and power (including professional practitioners, producers, teachers) and those who do not (students, technicians, supporting staff) – could prove vital in moving us forward. </p>
<p>And we can do it with what we do best. Performance has momentum. Using the medium to speak with those who are training in the performing arts could provide the platform from which to initiate change.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qTA1b4rlTXI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Theatre of the Oppressed tackles homophobia.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At Edith Cowan University’s Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), we are currently in discussion with the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) to look at developing experiential, practice-based approaches to #MeToo training for performing arts students. </p>
<p>Those who deliver training at WAAPA will complete #MeToo and intimacy training. Interactive role-play and assertiveness coaching will build emotional intelligence and develop confidence in transactional communication. By “acting out” scenarios of harassment, coercion, or sexism we can experience their impact, test practical responses and make explicit what is not acceptable. </p>
<p>These steps will impart agency to young performers, but also help ensure their safety and welfare. Training that is genuinely creative and empowering liberates self-belief and the confidence to speak. </p>
<p>Instead of assuming that performing arts students are innately possessed of such qualities, we need to think about imparting them from the moment they arrive. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y7XkD9d5sY0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Drama students at York University discuss intimacy choreography and score the intensity of intimacy scenes and actions.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Action on set</h2>
<p>The training sector must embrace the important role of the <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/intimacy-directors-choreograph-sex-scenes_n_5b0d87dae4b0fdb2aa574564">intimacy director</a>. Like fight directors, choreographers or stunt co-ordinators, this role focuses on the need to remove risk and ensure the highest possible standards of safety on film and theatre sets as well as in the TV studio. </p>
<p>Excellent work is being done in this area by organisations such as <a href="https://www.intimacyonset.com/">Intimacy on Set</a> which offers a range of training packages as well as advice on ensuring safe working practices and protocols. </p>
<p>Ita O’Brien, the organisation’s founder, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-03/normal-people-game-thrones-sex-violence-ethics-film-tv/12205914">stresses</a> the importance of establishing a safe working environment: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>An injury can go from purely physical, to emotional and psychological – when someone’s body has been handled and touched in a way that is not suitable for that person … intimacy coordination work is about everybody being in agreement and consent … and about absolutely every detail serving character, serving story telling. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Referring to <a href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/how-do-sex-scenes-work">her work as Intimacy Coordinator</a> on the BBC/Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s award winning novel, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p089g8rs">Normal People</a>, O’Brien points to the vulnerability of the drama’s young leading actors (Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal) and offers an insight into how she approached early rehearsals. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Actors want to give their best. They want to say yes, but we had to create an atmosphere where they didn’t just say yes because they felt like they needed to …Everyone had the novel, so they knew what was required, but were they happy with it? </p>
<p>In my first rehearsal with director Lenny Abrahamson, and leading actors Daisy and Paul, I gave a presentation and showed all of them our intimacy guidelines. Then we worked on a scene that felt like a body dance. When we were done, everybody left knowing that everything would be handled in a professional way.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Locally, actor Michala Banas is working behind the scenes at Melbourne Theatre Company <a href="https://www.mtc.com.au/discover-more/mtc-now-2020/the-intimate-details/#:%7E:text=Netflix%2C%20Amazon%20and%20the%20BBC,acknowledged%20leader%20in%20the%20field.">as an intimacy coordinator</a> and cites O'Brien as a mentor. </p>
<p>If we are to guarantee the physical, emotional and psychological safety of our students during rehearsals and performances, then the guidance of an Intimacy Director is no longer an optional extra, but an absolute necessity.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZTPJrhtxuQc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Intimacy coordinator Ita O'Brien conducted workshops with actors in Australia last year.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Safe space</h2>
<p>Fear for our safety or for those around us can only ever be negative and destructive. </p>
<p>In the performing arts, we require those whom we train to be imaginative, courageous and sensitive. We ask them on a daily basis to take risks, to be experimental, to make new discoveries and to trust in the collective power of the ensemble. </p>
<p>Ensuring the establishment of clear and unambiguous boundaries between the personal and professional, together with a working environment that respects the rights of the individual can only ever liberate the work. The right to liberty and security of person is a <a href="https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/">universally declared human right</a>. The right to resist, openly challenge and report inappropriate or abusive behaviour in the workplace is not a favour that is bestowed upon us by tutors or institutions.</p>
<p>A safe space does not exclude the ardours of rigour and tenacity or even the quest for virtuosity and eminence. Moreover, it does not stifle creativity or artistic freedom. How could it? On the contrary, the freedom, security and trust that a genuinely safe space engenders makes the pursuit of performance excellence tangible and achievable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132516/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Shirley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Forty years since Fame showed the vulnerability of performing arts students, we can still do more to protect them. As we resume physical contact, we can use performance to renegotiate safe intimacy.David Shirley, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1320712020-02-27T14:14:06Z2020-02-27T14:14:06ZHow fame abroad changes African footballers’ way of life back home<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316622/original/file-20200221-92541-1tbrpxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Football continues to present a great chance for social mobility in Africa</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Natee K Jindakum/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>African footballers have long been attracted to careers abroad. This is easy to understand considering that many come from backgrounds of poverty and high unemployment rates in countries with repressive governments that mismanage resources. Rural life also poses challenges to aspiring sports people, such as a lack of playing grounds and other facilities. </p>
<p>These <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17532523.2010.483793">factors</a> tend to hinder football development on the continent. </p>
<p>The European football market offers footballers better conditions and socioeconomic <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17430437.2010.491269?src=recsys">benefits</a>. Foreign leagues provide considerably better earnings than what players earn in their domestic leagues. </p>
<p>The evolution of the European football market picked up in the 1980s, providing a chance for many African players to achieve professional status. Football became a global business product, attracting huge broadcasting rights and corporate sponsorship. </p>
<p>The experience of playing and living abroad in this environment can lead to changes in players’ behaviour. Not only do they have far greater wealth than their peers, they may break old social ties and consider themselves “special”. </p>
<p>I set out to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2018.1541797?src=recsys">explore</a> these changes to understand why achieving professional status abroad should suddenly affect players’ behaviour in their home communities. </p>
<p>I interviewed professional footballers from Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Cameroon and Egypt, aged between 18 and 52, who had played in the leagues of countries like England, Germany, Spain, Italy and France. They were asked to describe their football career path from their country of origin to moving abroad and beginning their professional activity. The study captured both current players and those who had left Africa in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.</p>
<p>The study found that upward social mobility often led to extreme behavioural and attitude switches. Some of the notable traits from the players studied were arrogance and conspicuous consumption. Some even spoke ill of fellow professionals in lower or developing leagues.</p>
<p>This is important because their home communities expect them to maintain a relationship with the people who supported them during their formative periods. It leads to social disconnection when some are perceived as “ungrateful” and reluctant to give back to society.</p>
<p>All interviewees admitted that fame and wealth, if not properly managed, could have a negative effect on society. On the other hand, they could use their higher social status to change lives in their home countries.</p>
<p>In contrast to professional footballers who migrate, other kinds of migrant workers often maintain strong <a href="https://books.google.com.gh/books?id=owbACQAAQBAJ&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=migrant+workers+and+their+relationships+back+home&source=bl&ots=DtBiEwliqD&sig=ACfU3U1OYt5PKPD5Z5T9uFS2x8-5lbyacQ&hl=ha&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi88u_HvOLnAhUZSRUIHY3XBxI4ChDoATAAegQICRAB#v=onepage&q=migrant%20workers%20and%20their%20relationships%20back%20home&f=false">connections</a> with people at home. Sometimes they send resources to support projects for the public benefit, such as building schools.</p>
<h2>African beginnings</h2>
<p>Many African players began their professional journey by playing in street football and inter-street competitions within their communities or nearby communities. Social practice of the sport supported individual players’ social integration and made them visible to football enthusiasts. All the players I interviewed said they had received a lot of support from their communities. </p>
<p>When they left their communities to play abroad, they gained social status and national recognition. Most moved to cities and adopted new attitudes. A player recalled that the “<em>job of football has a way of changing you if you’re not careful without you knowing, unconsciously, you’ll turn out to be a different human being</em>”. </p>
<p>An example is Abedi Pele, a former captain of Ghana and one of the most globally recognised footballers to emerge from Africa. Speaking at a <a href="https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Abedi-Pele-places-hope-in-G8-85204">G8 Summit</a> he said: </p>
<p><em>“We were enjoying football and having fun but to see that such a thing can turn to the most lucrative business in the world is what amazes me, something I started like a joke became the most unique, powerful, influential business in the world that when you speak people listen, when you talk, you inspire millions of people… And you have to also learn to maintain the fame and not to abuse it”</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317359/original/file-20200226-24685-y7ee2a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317359/original/file-20200226-24685-y7ee2a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317359/original/file-20200226-24685-y7ee2a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317359/original/file-20200226-24685-y7ee2a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317359/original/file-20200226-24685-y7ee2a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317359/original/file-20200226-24685-y7ee2a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317359/original/file-20200226-24685-y7ee2a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317359/original/file-20200226-24685-y7ee2a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former skipper of the Ghanaian national footbal team and attacking midfielder Abedi Pele is regarded as one of the greatest African footballers of all time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Apart from fame, my study found that there are other variables that can drive changes in players’ behaviour. Some do not recognise the changes personally. They include belief in one’s own abilities and the likelihood of one’s behaviour leading to a specific outcome. Other variables include self-control and learning from observation. The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2095521?origin=crossref%20/%20doi:10.2307/2095521&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">influence</a> of these variables on behaviour is not unexpected when a person comes from a background of moderate education. </p>
<p>Players in the study said they had to guard against behaviour such as ignoring their former team colleagues, senior players, coaches, friends and the community that supported their professional activities abroad. They said the community saw such behaviour as undesirable since it did not represent their cultural norms and social values. These values include reciprocal behaviour and an attitude of humility, obedience, gratitude and submissiveness. </p>
<p>Abedi Pele noted that</p>
<p><em>“When you are rich, famous and influential, if you don’t take your time you will think that the world belongs to you or you control it”</em></p>
<p>A few players in the study identified fame and wealth as an opportunity to support a worthy cause in African communities. One was Stephen Appiah, a school dropout who grew up in Chorkor, a poor fishing community in Accra, Ghana. He <a href="https://ghanasoccernet.com/stephen-appiah-to-unveil-his-free-clinic-and-library">built</a> a health-care centre and library and created an annual sports day event for Chorkor. He no longer lives there but his social projects represent his presence there after his success. </p>
<p>Communities expect successful players to be guided by social norms that shaped their early lives – not just by wealth and fame achieved later. But sudden situational changes tend to influence people’s social networks. Many footballers no longer mix with their former friends. </p>
<p>The study suggests that if professional African players maintain their bond with their home communities, they can create opportunities to support local development. They can also serve as role models for young talent keen to have a career abroad.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132071/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ernest Yeboah Acheampong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fame changes the bonds that some African footballers have with their home communities.Ernest Yeboah Acheampong, Lecturer, Health,Physical Education,Recreation and Sport (HPERS), Akenten Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1308362020-01-31T13:03:53Z2020-01-31T13:03:53ZWhy losing Kobe Bryant felt like losing a relative or friend<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312931/original/file-20200130-41481-sbncuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C4%2C2950%2C1917&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Flowers and messages are placed at a memorial for Kobe Bryant in front of Staples Center in Los Angeles.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Obit-Bryant-Basketball/18cd377abf1942f1b708226dd6356365/29/0">AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the afternoon of Jan. 26, I was at the Indiana men’s basketball game when a chorus of cellphones in the crowd pinged, alerting them to the news of <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/kobe-bryant-death-latest-news-updates-reactions-as-lakers-legend-nba-icon-dies-at-41-in-helicopter-crash/live/">Kobe Bryant’s death</a>. I was astonished at how quickly fans’ attention switched from the game to utter shock and disbelief at the news of Bryant’s passing.</p>
<p>Soon, it seemed like the entire nation was in mourning.</p>
<p>Sure, we might expect the basketball world to grieve the passing of one of its all-time greats. But grief came from all corners. The Grammy Awards featured <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf3jLio7QRs">poignant tributes</a> to Bryant. <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1221582230008619016">President Donald Trump</a> and former <a href="https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1221552460768202756">President Barack Obama</a> offered their condolences. People who had never met Bryant told reporters they felt like <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/thousands-stunned-kobe-bryant-fans-gather-los-angeles-mourn-his-n1123556">they had just lost a family member</a>.</p>
<p>How can so many be so deeply affected by the death of someone they’ve never even met? Why might some people see Kobe Bryant as a family member? </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ozneetEAAAAJ&hl=en">As a social psychologist</a>, I’m not surprised by these reactions. I see three main reasons, grounded in psychology, that explain why Bryant’s death had such a profound effect on so many people.</p>
<h2>1. Feelings formed from afar</h2>
<p>Psychologists Shira Gabriel and Melanie Green <a href="http://spsp.org/news-center/blog/gabriel-celebrities">have written about</a> how many of us form what are called “<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321586609_Parasocial_Interaction_Parasocial_Relationships_and_Well-Being">parasocial bonds</a>” with other people. These tend to be one-way relationships with people whom we’ve never met or interacted with, but nonetheless feel intimately connected to. </p>
<p>Although ideas about parasocial bonds were first developed in the 1950s, they’ve garnered a lot of attention over the past couple of decades. For example, loyal fans of Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres watch their shows almost every day, <a href="https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/%7Ejpiliavi/965/oprah.pdf">with the hosts actively trying to build a warm rapport with their viewers</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.20815">their audience developing intense feelings of attachment</a>. </p>
<p>But interest in parasocial relationships <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gayle_Stever/publication/263257850_Twitter_as_a_Way_for_Celebrities_to_Communicate_with_Fans_Implications_for_the_Study_of_Parasocial_Interaction/links/00b4953a44862a8747000000/Twitter-as-a-Way-for-Celebrities-to-Communicate-with-Fans-Implications-for-the-Study-of-Parasocial-Interaction.pdf">has exploded</a> in the age of social media. People who follow celebrities on Twitter and Instagram get access to their relationships, emotions, opinions, triumphs and travails. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1171926600587337729"}"></div></p>
<p>Even though it’s a one-way relationship – what are the chances a celebrity actually responds to a fan’s message on social media? – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21001">fans can feel a profound level of intimacy with the famous people they follow</a>. Kobe Bryant, with over <a href="https://twitter.com/kobebryant">15 million followers</a> on Twitter and nearly <a href="https://www.instagram.com/kobebryant/?hl=en">20 million followers</a> on Instagram, clearly had a massive following.</p>
<h2>2. The ‘what if’ factor</h2>
<p>Still, there was something about Bryant’s death that seemed particularly tragic. </p>
<p>There’s no way to measure whether the outpouring of public grief surpassed that of recent celebrity deaths like Michael Jackson, Prince or Robin Williams. But it’s certainly possible that the unique circumstances surrounding Kobe Bryant’s death evoked stronger emotions. </p>
<p>Bryant died in a helicopter during extremely foggy conditions. This can lead to a lot of “what ifs,” otherwise known as “<a href="https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social-cognition/counterfactual-thinking/">counterfactual thoughts</a>.” Work by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167295212002">has shown</a> that when we can easily come up with ways to undo an outcome – say, “if it had been a clear day, Kobe would still be alive” – it can intensify the anger, sadness or frustration about a negative event. It makes the death seem that much more random – and make us feel like it never should have happened in the first place.</p>
<p>Furthermore, Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/26/us/gianna-bryant-kobe-relationship-trnd/index.html">Gianna</a>, died in the accident, along with seven others. This broadens Bryant’s identity beyond the basketball court, reminding people of his role as a father of four daughters – three of whom will now have to live without their sister and father.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312954/original/file-20200130-41503-iy7jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312954/original/file-20200130-41503-iy7jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312954/original/file-20200130-41503-iy7jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312954/original/file-20200130-41503-iy7jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312954/original/file-20200130-41503-iy7jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312954/original/file-20200130-41503-iy7jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312954/original/file-20200130-41503-iy7jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students walk beside a mural of Kobe Bryant and daughter Gianna at a basketball court in Taguig, Philippines.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Philippines-Obit-Bryant/d093b14fe130447087051e3372b7cf0f/149/0">AP Photo/Aaron Favila</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. It’s about us, not him</h2>
<p>I’d also add that our grief over Kobe’s death may actually be less about him – and more about us.</p>
<p>According to “<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/terror-management-theory">terror management theory</a>,” reminders of our own mortality evoke an existential terror. In response, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.adms.2014.08.003">we search for ways to give our lives meaning</a> and seek comfort and reassurance by connecting with loved ones. I found it striking that following the news of Bryant’s death, his former teammate Shaquille O’Neal <a href="https://www.deseret.com/entertainment/2020/1/29/21113626/kobe-bryant-death-shaquille-oneal-response-twitter-podcast">said that he had called up several estranged friends</a> in order to make amends. Bryant’s death was a stark reminder that life’s too short to hold onto petty grudges. </p>
<p>Similarly, after the loss of loved ones, we’ll often hear people suggest hugging those we love tightly, or living every day to the fullest.</p>
<p>Many had felt like they had gotten to know Bryant after watching him play basketball on TV for 20 years. His death was random and tragic, reminding us that we, too, will someday die – and making us wonder what we’ll have to show for our lives. </p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=expertise">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130836/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward R. Hirt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A social psychologist explains how you can be so deeply affected by the death of someone you’ve never met.Edward R. Hirt, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/785842018-03-01T11:40:25Z2018-03-01T11:40:25ZThe history of the Hollywood sign, from public nuisance to symbol of stardom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193652/original/file-20171107-6715-th4feu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-ENT-CA-USA-APHS462573-Hollywood-Sign-1978/b589ca73c117473e81f68ba24b895319/81/0">George Brich/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every year at the Oscars, the cameras pan to the famed Hollywood sign and its bold white letters.</p>
<p>Ask someone today what the sign symbolizes, and the same words will likely crop up: <em>Movies. Stardom. Glamour.</em></p>
<p>But as I point in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=eEnLlfsGfGkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=hollywood+sign+leo+braudy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLkpmk7b_ZAhUFR6wKHR0pCq8Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">my book on the Hollywood sign</a>, the sign didn’t always represent fame and fortune. As the city changed, so did the meaning of the sign, which, at one point, was even considered a public nuisance. </p>
<h2>Come to … Hollywoodland?</h2>
<p>California has long possessed the lure of material and personal fulfillment.</p>
<p>What started as a destination for those hoping to strike gold became, in the late 19th century, a mecca for anyone with real or imagined ailments. The state’s temperate climate and natural springs, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=zm5oBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=california+health+destination+19th+century&source=bl&ots=gFkRyLbfW1&sig=5hWBgDNks80_z2mnZvn7ITx1a-o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW0tesscnZAhUBMqwKHcnRANAQ6AEITzAF#v=onepage&q=california%20health%20destination%2019th%20century&f=false">guidebooks claimed</a>, possessed “restorative powers for weakened dispositions.” </p>
<p>The state’s gold has since been drained, and the quest for perfect health has spread to rest of the country. But the erection of the famed Hollywood sign in 1923 marked the start of another phase, one still with us today. </p>
<p>During that decade, a real estate development group, one of whose principal backers was Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, built a large sign – essentially a billboard – on an unnamed mountain between the Los Angeles basin and the San Fernando Valley. </p>
<p>“Hollywoodland,” the sign read. Its 40,000 blinking light bulbs advertised a new housing development built to accommodate the city’s surging population, which <a href="http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po02.php">more than doubled</a> during the 1920s to become the fifth largest in the country, as the city drew people from all over the country for its weather, open spaces and jobs. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193665/original/file-20171107-6733-1pjbpw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193665/original/file-20171107-6733-1pjbpw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193665/original/file-20171107-6733-1pjbpw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193665/original/file-20171107-6733-1pjbpw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193665/original/file-20171107-6733-1pjbpw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193665/original/file-20171107-6733-1pjbpw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193665/original/file-20171107-6733-1pjbpw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193665/original/file-20171107-6733-1pjbpw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sweeping view of the Hollywoodland sign.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7561/15647647441_0d8d1d1bf0_z.jpg">Breve Storia del Cinema</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The city of Hollywood <a href="https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/blog/historical-timeline-los-angeles">had been absorbed</a> into Los Angeles only a decade earlier. At the time, it was a wealthy area that had grudgingly accepted the movie business. Many mansions dotted the hillsides below the sign, and utopian communities like <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2014/5/22/10099768/the-creation-of-beachwood-canyons-theosophist-dreamland-1">Krotona</a>, the U.S. headquarters of a mystical organization called the Theosophical Society, had sprung up in the foothills and on the flats. </p>
<p>Accordingly, early advertising for Hollywoodland emphasized the development’s exclusivity. It would offer an escape from the smog, dirt and unwelcome neighbors of downtown Los Angeles.</p>
<h2>Saving the sign</h2>
<p>Because the sign holds such a prominent place in the nation’s cultural imagination today, it may be surprising to learn that it wasn’t until fairly recently that it achieved its iconic status. </p>
<p>In the 1930s and 1940s, the sign makes an appearance in only a few of the movies that were about Hollywood or the movie industry. Other Hollywood institutions, like the <a href="http://brownderbyhollywood.com/about.html">Brown Derby restaurant</a>, tended to represent the film world.</p>
<p>In the 1940s, Los Angeles – as both city and symbol – started to change. A dense smog settled over the metropolis, which would be featured as the grim, shadowy setting of noir films like “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038355/?ref_=adv_li_tt">The Big Sleep</a>” and “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/?ref_=adv_li_tt">Double Indemnity</a>.” </p>
<p>The sign – a little dingier, a little more unslightly – reflected the changing city. Since it was originally intended as an advertisement, few had considered its permanence or long-term significance. </p>
<p>The hillside where it had been built was dangerously steep; workers had cut the letters from thin sheet metal, which they tacked onto telephone poles. Heavy winds could easily rip the letters away, and by the late 1940s, there had been so much deterioration that the city of Los Angeles proposed to tear it down, calling it a dangerous public nuisance. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193658/original/file-20171107-6733-1vd7y81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193658/original/file-20171107-6733-1vd7y81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193658/original/file-20171107-6733-1vd7y81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193658/original/file-20171107-6733-1vd7y81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193658/original/file-20171107-6733-1vd7y81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193658/original/file-20171107-6733-1vd7y81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193658/original/file-20171107-6733-1vd7y81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193658/original/file-20171107-6733-1vd7y81.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this 1978 photograph, workers prepare to lower the last letter of the old Hollywood sign that had stood at the site since the 1920s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-ENT-CA-USA-APHS462574-Hollywood-Sign-1978/2e26f25fa66743fd8a31003e114c9703/78/0">Wally Fong/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That dismissive view of the sign began to change in 1949, when the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hollywood-sign-sold-for-450k/">told the city that it would take over its ownership and maintenance</a>. With that exchange, the “land” suffix was dropped. We could say that this is the point that the Hollywood sign we know today was actually born.</p>
<p>However, improvements and maintenance occurred in fits and starts. By the early 1970s, committees were being formed to “save” the sign in order to restore it beyond shoddy paint jobs and patchwork repairs. </p>
<p>Finally, in 1978 a committee headed by Hugh Hefner and Alice Cooper collected the funds – about US$27,000 per letter – to not simply repair, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/09/hugh-hefner-hollywood-sign">but rebuild the sign</a>.</p>
<p>Today the big white letters are a permanent fixture in the Los Angeles landscape, and it’s even withstood the attempts of adventurous vandals to emulate <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/01/us/hollywood-hollyweed-sign/index.html">the art student</a> who, in 1976, tweaked the sign to read “<a href="http://www.trbimg.com/img-58694e84/turbine/la-lnelson-1483296437-snap-photo">Hollyweed</a>.”</p>
<p>In their own way, these vandals are trying to carve out their own slice of the Hollywood dream – a quest not for gold or for health, but for recognition and fame, whether by talent, ambition or selfie. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193649/original/file-20171107-6753-vfsiqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193649/original/file-20171107-6753-vfsiqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193649/original/file-20171107-6753-vfsiqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193649/original/file-20171107-6753-vfsiqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193649/original/file-20171107-6753-vfsiqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193649/original/file-20171107-6753-vfsiqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193649/original/file-20171107-6753-vfsiqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193649/original/file-20171107-6753-vfsiqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Today the Hollywood sign stands strong.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Travel-Trip-Essentials-Los-Angeles/d63dea50b58648868944cb81ec01c5d4/167/0">Reed Saxon/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leo Braudy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Only recently did it come to represent the dream of fame.Leo Braudy, Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/879922017-12-01T00:41:36Z2017-12-01T00:41:36ZCharles Manson and the perversion of the American dream<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196404/original/file-20171126-21805-ao52xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Charles Manson leaves a Los Angeles courtroom in March 1970.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Californi-/296e3fb8237b4c4c8d9987cf367d284a/94/0">George Brich/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Charles Manson died in November 2017, his name carried weight even among those who weren’t alive when he committed his crimes.</p>
<p>For decades, Manson was the symbol of evil, a real-life boogeyman who loomed as the American conception of wickedness incarnate. His death ended 48 years of imprisonment for a series of murders in August 1969, some of which he committed, most of which he ordered.</p>
<p>But his death also reminds us of Manson’s obsessive longing to make a name for himself. As I was researching <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Had-Ocean-Mayhem-Angeles/dp/1613734913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509465732&sr=8-1&keywords=everybody+had+an+ocean">my book on Los Angeles in the 1960s</a>, I was struck by how fame – more than art, more than religion, more than money – motivated Manson as he careened from prison, to musician, to murder. In his way, he was an early adopter of something that permeates American culture today.</p>
<h2>Becoming something out of nothing</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.groveatlantic.com/?title=Manson+in+His+Own+Words">According to Charles Manson</a>, when he was a boy, his family didn’t pay him much attention: His mother, a prostitute and small-time thief, once traded him for a pitcher of beer. </p>
<p>Manson was jailed for the first time at 13, for burglary. By the time he was in his early 30s, he’d already spent half his life behind bars.</p>
<p>As he was being released from California’s Terminal Island prison in 1967, he panicked and asked the jailer not to turn him out into the world. The guard laughed, but Manson was serious. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Had-Ocean-Mayhem-Angeles/dp/1613734913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509465732&sr=8-1&keywords=everybody+had+an+ocean">Prison was the only real home he’d known</a>.</p>
<p>When the lifelong con man hit the streets, much had changed since 1960, the year he had last tasted freedom. It was the <a href="http://www.the60sofficialsite.com/Summer_of_Love.html">Summer of Love</a>, and Manson drifted to San Francisco, the epicenter of America’s cultural revolution. </p>
<p>There he found docile flower children – easy marks, even for an inept crook. He adopted the hirsute look of the tribe, recycled some of the Scientology babble he’d picked up in the joint and started building a “family” of followers drunk on his flattery. He preyed on lost and damaged young women – wounded birds – and made them think they were beautiful, as long as they followed him.</p>
<p>He sought fame. He deserved fame, he reasoned, and he needed to make the world notice him. Music would be his vehicle: He knew a few chords and could reasonably mimic the peace, love and flowers ethos in his lyrics. </p>
<p>“His followers had no idea that Charlie was obsessed with becoming famous,” biographer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/books/review/manson-a-biography-by-jeff-guinn.html">Jeff Guinn</a> wrote. “He told them that his goal, his mission, really, was to teach the world a better way to live through his songs.”</p>
<p>He brought his “family” of damaged goods to Los Angeles and sent his women to find people who could help him in his quest. While hitchhiking one day, a couple of the girls found an easy mark: the big-hearted, generous and sex-obsessed drummer for the Beach Boys, <a href="http://www.williammckeen.com/an-excerpt-from-everybody-had-an-ocean/">Dennis Wilson</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Had-Ocean-Mayhem-Angeles/dp/1613734913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509465732&sr=8-1&keywords=everybody+had+an+ocean">He picked them up</a>, took them home for milk, cookies and sex, then left for a recording session. When Dennis returned home in the middle of the night, the girls were still there, along with Charles Manson and 15 other young women, all mostly nude. For a sex junkie like Dennis, it was paradise. He bragged about his nubile roommates to his rock star pals, and by the end of 1968, Britain’s Record Mirror <a href="http://www.smileysmile.net/uncanny/index.php/dennis-wilson-i-live-with-17-girls">published a profile</a> titled “Dennis Wilson: I Live With 17 Girls.”</p>
<h2>Grasping at coattails</h2>
<p>Manson saw Dennis – and his Beach Boy brothers Brian and Carl – as his entrée to the music business and international fame. Although the group’s star was dimming by the late ‘60s – they were no longer the hip boy band they had once been – it was at least a foot in the music industry’s door. Through his time as Dennis Wilson’s roommate, Manson had gotten to know record producer Terry Melcher, Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas, Neil Young and Frank Zappa. </p>
<p>Convinced he would make Manson – whom he called the Wizard – into a star, Dennis urged his brothers to record the fledgling singer at the Beach Boys studio in Brian Wilson’s home. Wherever Manson went, of course, his “family” followed. Marilyn Wilson, married to Brian at the time, had the bathrooms fumigated after every session, fearing the filthy girls were spreading disease. (And they were, though not the kind that showed up on toilet seats. Dennis ended up footing, for the Manson women, <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/beach-boys-a-california-saga-part-ii-19711111">what was jokingly referred to</a> as the largest gonorrhea bill in history.)</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196559/original/file-20171127-2004-h174uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Beach Boys pictured in November 1966. Clockwise from left: Dennis Wilson, Alan Jardine, Bruce Johnston, Mike Love and Carl Wilson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-International-News-Ente-/6cebe0432e3243d999c5f65a92f1aa08/8/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After Dennis’s efforts bore no fruit, Manson glommed onto Melcher, who had produced the Byrds and Paul Revere and the Raiders. Melcher and Wilson introduced Manson to Los Angeles’s music society, largely through lavish parties at the estate on Cielo Drive that Melcher shared with actress Candace Bergen. At Cass Elliot’s parties, Manson played whirling dervish on the dance floor, entertaining all with his spastic monkey moves. </p>
<p>When Neil Young heard Manson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpx4ODP35VQ&list=PLj2l6Lgg-kToX1vJaO881hGiUmqSzJ9n_">sing his compositions</a> during a drop-in at Dennis Wilson’s house, he called Mo Ostin, president of Warner-Reprise Records, to urge the boss to give the guy a listen. Young warned him that Manson was a little out there and spewed songs more than sang him. But still, Young insisted there was something there.</p>
<p>And there was. Manson’s voice was good enough that he had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/style/charles-manson-annoying-hipster.html">a reasonable expectation of getting a recording contract</a>. His original compositions were good enough to be recorded: The Beach Boys adapted one of his songs into something called “Never Learn Not to Love,” which they performed on the supremely wholesome “Mike Douglas Show.” </p>
<p>Manson’s lyrics, unfortunately, were mostly gibberish, bad enough to justify Ostin’s rejection and for Melcher to tell Manson he couldn’t get him the record contract he so desperately wanted.</p>
<p>But it was too late to stop now. He had drunk from the trough of fame. He mingled with rock stars and thought he was entitled to be one. </p>
<h2>Manson’s American dream</h2>
<p>The American dream used to be described thus: Come to America with nothing and, with the great freedoms and opportunity offered by the country, exit life with prosperity. It has also been described as simply the ideal of freedom – of living in a free and robust society, with nothing to impede people but an open road.</p>
<p>At some point, this changed. In the post-war world of abundant leisure and instant gratification, an ethos of opportunity, hard work and the gradual accumulation of wealth fell away, replaced by a longing for instant fame and fortune. Perhaps it was a result of the conspicuous wealth so visible on the new medium of television. Maybe these new celebrities burned so much brighter because their images slipped through the cathode ray into millions of American homes, turning the house into the new movie theater. </p>
<p>Either way, for millions today, the American dream is simply <a href="https://theconversation.com/inspired-by-kim-kardashian-a-feverish-legion-of-followers-struggle-to-achieve-online-fame-51534">the delirious pursuit of fame</a>. Ask a schoolchild what he wants and <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/yalda-t-uhls/kids-want-fame_b_1201935.html">many will say to be famous</a> – by any means necessary. </p>
<p>Charles Manson was an early avatar for this new concept of the American dream. He sought fame at any cost. He tried to achieve celebrity through music and, when he didn’t reach that goal, he turned to crime. Sure, he would spend 61 of his 83 years in prison. But the cameras rolled, the papers were printed, the books were sold. No one would ever forget his name.</p>
<p>In the summer of 1969, actress Sharon Tate and some houseguests were living in a <a href="http://cielodrive.com/10050-cielo-drive.php">Cielo Drive</a> home recently vacated by Terry Melcher and Candace Bergen. Manson didn’t send his murderous family for Melcher and Bergen – he knew they had moved. Instead, he wanted to frighten Melcher and other members of the rock’n’roll elite. The following night’s murder of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca was likewise intended to breed hysteria. It worked.</p>
<p>Manson achieved his goal, becoming so famous that his name replaced those of his victims. The crimes became known as the Manson murders.</p>
<p>Look to the media today to see Manson’s ideological descendants, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/fashion/jake-paul-team-10-youtube.html">thirsting for fame</a>. Some don’t just risk humiliation, they court it. Remember the early rounds of “American Idol” with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d5eP0wWLQY">jarringly dreadful performances</a> giving the reprehensible “singers” their 15 seconds of fame? </p>
<p>Other, more deadly offspring, could be the boys who shoot up schools and coffee shops and prayer-group meetings. They might be dead, they might have left a trail of destruction in their wake and they aren’t mourned. But like Manson, they are remembered. That’s certainly more than most failed con men can claim.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Manson did end up achieving his goal. Perhaps the best way to honor his victims is to forget his name.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87992/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William McKeen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Desperate to achieve fame by any means necessary, Manson was ahead of his time: Today, the delirious pursuit of fame has gone mainstream.William McKeen, Professor and Chair, Department of Journalism, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/860372017-11-13T02:54:07Z2017-11-13T02:54:07ZHow a young Ernest Hemingway dealt with his first taste of fame<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193821/original/file-20171108-14209-gtd35o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ernest Hemingway with a bull near Pamplona, Spain in 1927, two years before 'A Farewell to Arms' would be published.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Ernest_Hemingway_with_a_bull%2C_Spain%2C_1927.jpg">Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When he published “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=hoOMCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA287&dq=the+sun+also+rises&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6qIeU-6LXAhVnw4MKHZMPBmcQ6AEIODAD#v=onepage&q=the%20sun%20also%20rises&f=false">The Sun Also Rises</a>” in 1926, Ernest Hemingway was well-known among the expatriate literati of Paris and to cosmopolitan literary circles in New York and Chicago. But it was “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=N-_6oQEACAAJ&dq=a+farewell+to+arms&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGgrjgi6PXAhVB04MKHfw4AzAQ6AEIKDAA">A Farewell to Arms</a>,” published in October 1929, that made him a celebrity. </p>
<p>With this newfound fame, Hemingway learned, came fan mail. Lots of it. And he wasn’t really sure how to deal with the attention. </p>
<p>At the <a href="https://www.hemingwaysociety.org/hemingway-letters-project">Hemingway Letters Project</a>, I’ve had the privilege of working with Hemingway’s approximately 6,000 outgoing letters. “<a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/literary-texts/letters-ernest-hemingway-volume-4?format=HB#4FxeadZU37JpH5RF.97">The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Volume 4 (1929-1931)</a>” – edited by Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel – brought to light 430 annotated letters, 85 percent of which were published for the first time. They offer a glimpse at how Hemingway handled his growing celebrity, shedding new light on the author’s influences and his relationships with other writers. </p>
<h2>Mutual admiration</h2>
<p>The success of “A Farewell to Arms” surprised even Hemingway’s own publisher. Robert W. Trogdon, a Hemingway scholar and member of the Letters Project’s editorial team, <a href="http://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2011/the-lousy-racket/">traces the author’s relationship with Scribner’s</a> and notes that while it ordered an initial printing of over 31,000 copies – six times as many as the first printing of “The Sun Also Rises” – the publisher still underestimated the demand for the book. </p>
<p>Additional print runs brought the total edition to over 101,000 copies before the year was out – and that was after the devastating 1929 stock market crash. </p>
<p>In response to the many fan letters he received, Hemingway was typically gracious. Sometimes he offered writerly advice, and even went so far as to send – upon request and at his own expense – several of his books to a prisoner at St. Quentin.</p>
<p>At the same time, writing to novelist <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-21829409">Hugh Walpole</a> in December 1929, Hemingway lamented the amount of effort – and postage – required to answer all those letters:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When ‘The Sun Also Rises’ came out there were only letters from a few old ladies who wanted to make a home for me and said my disability would be no drawback and drunks who claimed we had met places. ‘Men Without Women’ brought no letters at all. What are you supposed to do when you really start to get letters?” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Among the fan mail he received was a letter from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/23/bloomsburys-outsider-a-life-of-david-garnett-sarah-knights-review-biography">David Garnett</a>, an English novelist from a literary family with connections to the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/bloomsbury/lifestyle-lives-and-legacy-bloomsbury-group">Bloomsbury Group</a>, a network of writers, artists and intellectuals that included Virginia Woolf. </p>
<p>Though we don’t have Garnett’s letter to Hemingway, Garnett appears to have predicted, rightly, that “A Farewell to Arms” would be more than a fleeting success. </p>
<p>“I hope to god what you say about the book will be true,” Hemingway replies, “though how we are to know whether they last I don’t know – But anyway you were fine to say it would.” </p>
<p>He then goes on to praise Garnett’s 1925 novel, “The Sailor’s Return”:</p>
<p>“…all I did was to go around wishing to god I could have written it. It is still the only book I would like to have written of all the books since our father’s and mother’s times.” (Garnett was seven years older than Hemingway; Hemingway greatly admired the translations of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy by Constance Garnett, David’s mother.)</p>
<h2>An overlooked influence</h2>
<p>Hemingway’s response to Garnett – written the same day as his letter to Walpole – is notable for several reasons. </p>
<p>First, it complicates the popular portrait of Hemingway as an antagonist to other writers. </p>
<p>It’s a reputation that’s not entirely undeserved – after all, one of Hemingway’s earliest publications was a tribute to Joseph Conrad in which Hemingway expressed a desire to run T.S. Eliot through a sausage grinder. “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Torrents_of_Spring">The Torrents of Spring</a>” (1926), his first published novel, was a parody of his own mentors, Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein and “all the rest of the pretensious [sic] faking bastards,” as he put it in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/american-literature/letters-ernest-hemingway-volume-2?format=HB#iiFH3pBCSRDeWzCm.97">a 1925 letter</a> to Ezra Pound.</p>
<p>But in the letter to Garnett we see another side of Hemingway: an avid reader overcome with boyish excitement. </p>
<p>“You have meant very much to me as a writer,” he declares, “and now that you have written me that letter I should feel very fine – But instead all that happens is I don’t believe it.”</p>
<p>The letter also suggests that Garnett has been overlooked as one of Hemingway’s influences.</p>
<p>It’s easy to see why Hemingway liked “The Sailor’s Return” (so well, it appears, that he checked it out from Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Co. lending library <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/The-Ernest-Hemingway-Collection/%7E/media/143FD43007D14DB89A4CE973C2EAC3F5.pdf">and never returned it</a>). </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.powys-society.org/Llewelyn%20Powys%20review%20of%20The%20Sailor's%20Return.htm">reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune</a> praised Garnett’s “simple but extremely lucid English” and his “power of making fiction appear to be fact,” qualities that are the hallmark of Hemingway’s own distinctive style. The book also has a certain understated wit – <a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/literary-criticism/8935121/whats-funny-in-sun-also-rises">as do</a> “The Sun Also Rises” and “A Farewell to Arms.” </p>
<p>Garnett’s book would have appealed to Hemingway on a personal level as well. Though it’s set entirely in England, the portrait of Africa that exists in the background is the same sort of exotic wilderness that captured the imagination of Hemingway the boy and that Hemingway the young man still longed explore. </p>
<h2>Imagining Africa</h2>
<p>But Hemingway’s praise of Garnett leads to other, unsettling questions. </p>
<p>From its frontispiece to its devastating conclusion, Garnett’s book relies on racial stereotypes of an exoticized, infantilized Other. Its main character, an African woman, brought to England by her white husband, is meant to command the reader’s sympathy – indeed, the choice she makes in the end, to send her mixed-race child back to his African family, hearkens to an earlier era of sentimental literature and decries the parochial prejudices of English society. </p>
<p>However, that message is drowned out by the narrator’s assumptions about inherent differences between the races. Garnett’s biographer Sarah Knights <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bloomsburys-outsider-9781448215447/">suggests</a> that Garnett was “neither susceptible to casual racism nor prone to imperialist arrogance,” yet Garnett’s 1933 introduction to the Cape edition of Hemingway’s “The Torrents of Spring” claims “it is the privilege of civilized town-dwellers to sentimentalize primitive peoples.” In <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/specials/hemingway-spring.html">“The Torrents of Spring</a>,” Hemingway mocked the primitivism of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Laughter">Sherwood Anderson</a> (cringe-worthy even by 1925 standards), but as Garnett’s comment indicates, Hemingway imitated Anderson’s reliance on racial stereotypes as much as he criticized it.</p>
<p>What, then, can we glean about Hemingway’s views on race from his exuberant praise of “The Sailor’s Return”? Hemingway had a lifelong fascination with Africa, and his letters show that in 1929 he was already making plans for an African safari. He would take the trip in 1933 and publish his nonfiction memoir, “Green Hills of Africa,” in 1935. The work is experimental and modernistic, but the local people are secondary to Hemingway’s descriptions of “country.”</p>
<p>Late in life, however, Hemingway’s views on Africa would shift, and his second safari, in 1953-4, brought what scholar of American literature and African diaspora studies <a href="http://www2.tulane.edu/liberal-arts/english/faculty/nghana-lewis.cfm">Nghana tamu Lewis</a> <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ernest-hemingway-in-context/9A493C28173A68BD3D54322E2DDFD7FB">describes</a> as “a crisis of consciousness” that “engendered a new commitment to understanding African peoples’ struggles against oppression as part, rather than in isolation, of changing ecological conditions.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hemingway went to Africa in 1934.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ernest_Hemingway_on_safari,_1934.jpg">John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But back in 1929, when Hemingway was wondering what to do with an ever-growing pile of mail, that trip – along with another world war, a Nobel Prize and <a href="https://www.sc.edu/uscpress/books/2017/7742.html">the debilitating effects of his strenuous life</a> – were part of an unknowable future. </p>
<p>In “The Letters 1929-1931” we see a younger Hemingway, his social conscience yet to mature, trying to figure out his new role as professional author and celebrity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86037/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Verna Kale works for the Hemingway Letters Project. The Hemingway Letters Project receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>A newly published batch of Ernest Hemingway’s letters could change the way we think about the author’s influences, relationships with other writers and views on race.Verna Kale, Associate Editor, The Letters of Ernest Hemingway and Assistant Research Professor of English, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/863982017-10-26T05:14:03Z2017-10-26T05:14:03ZGeorge Michael: Freedom documents a star at war with fame<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191980/original/file-20171026-28079-1h98urd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">George Michael in the music video for Father Figure</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot from Youtube</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The new documentary, George Michael: Freedom, has been billed as the star’s last work. Mostly completed before his death in December 2016, it covers his career and influence, mixing both his personal life and professional output. Combining interviews, existing clips (mostly video) with some new voice-over from Michael, the documentary puts together a chronological narrative of the singer’s life. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U6rgI7hko9A?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Although there isn’t a great deal of original material from Michael himself, most interesting is the way his narrative has been reconsidered by some unlikely musical contemporaries such as Oasis’s Liam Gallagher. The documentary features new interviews with the record industry, showing that at times the machine seemed simply unable to understand how someone so young and talented could be so willing to deny their guidance. </p>
<p>Case in point was the major legal battle Michael launched with record company Sony in the early 1990s. At this stage Michael had been seemingly globally successful with Wham!; then apparently astronomically successful with his first solo album, Faith.</p>
<p>Looking at the “difficult second album” to follow up, he released the glorious Listen Without Prejudice – but wanted to do so without the press circus that had accompanied him up to that point. When he refused to have his image on the album’s cover or film clips – and also refused the interview/press circuit to promote the work – the record company simply didn’t understand why. Michael initiated legal proceedings against Sony for failing to promote the album. The case was dismissed. </p>
<p>As the documentary shows, it seems that ideologically, even now, Sony couldn’t quite comprehend Michael’s stance. At one point one of the reps compares Michael’s refusal to do promo to a film actor who refuses to attend a premiere. How could someone who enjoyed being the centre of attention when performing live, or when writing music for people to listen to in their most intimate moments, not be completely eager to talk about themselves endlessly on chat shows and pimp themselves out for record-store signings?</p>
<p>Michael had been talking about the stresses of fame at a young age in the lead-up to the legal battle. Most famously, in response to an interview about the pressure, a <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2016/12/read-sinatras-open-letter-to-george-michael.html">note addressed to Michael from Frank Sinatra</a> appeared in the press telling the then young pop star to “Loosen up. Swing, man,” and to stop his talk about “the tragedy of fame”. In his documentary Michael questions the letter’s authenticity, suggesting it was a publicist rather than Ol’ Blue Eyes himself. </p>
<p>Michael had articulated his disillusionment with fame when he was 27 years old. This was the age when many before him, thrust into similar situations, had also run from fame. Unfortunately, artists like Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Amy Winehouse had run in a much more permanent way. That Michael had the strength to be able to stand up for himself and his sanity at such a vulnerable time, even at the risk of being called a whinger by an icon, remains remarkable.</p>
<p>Much has already been written in the US and UK press about the documentary’s unlikely cameos and Michael’s champions. People like Liam Gallagher or Ricky Gervais perhaps at first appear too cool to have contributed without irony – however, soon it becomes clear they are genuine admirers. </p>
<p>Referencing the infamous “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/george-michael-arrested-over-lewd-act-1155246.html">lewd act</a>” for which Michael was arrested for sex with a man, Gervais praised the singer’s directness and candour. Refusing to be shamed personally, in the same way he had refused to be shamed before, he emerged instead making fun of those who sought to isolate or alienate him. The best revenge came with more great music – and a cheeky recreation with mirror balls and dancing camp cops.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gwZAYdHcDtU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Michael’s private life does makes its way into the documentary. Hearing him talk about his time with his first real love – Anselmo Feleppa, who died of AIDS not long after they met – is heartbreaking. It leads to a greater discussion about Michael’s ability to connect with audiences on his own terms, talking about Feleppa with his post-lawsuit album, Older. It shows how far the artist flourished when he was allowed to just get on with making music rather than making mainstream small talk. Older was a statement about Michael’s development, but also a grieving tribute to Feleppa’s life, love and passing. </p>
<p>The documentary is topped and tailed with the tributes to Michael performed by Adele and Coldplay in the months after his death. These, along with Kate Moss’s intro, are the only reminders in the program that Michael is actually gone. </p>
<p>The doco was made as a celebration (and somewhat strangely) as a Sony-sponsored promotion for <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/10/17/ad-the-day-sony-marks-george-michaels-listen-without-prejudice-re-issue-with">re-releases of Michael’s work</a>. Despite this, it remains beautiful and anything but sad. How lucky we were to have had him for as long as we did.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86398/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Giuffre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>George Michael’s posthumous documentary Freedom reveals the star’s tension between pop-stardom and privacy.Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/685272016-12-02T09:47:16Z2016-12-02T09:47:16ZAfter years of scandal, Philip Larkin finally has a spot in Poets’ Corner<p>Philip Larkin, one of English poetry’s most recognisable voices, has been memorialised in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner.</p>
<p>His ledger stone was unveiled on Friday December 2 alongside tombs and memorials commemorating some of the finest writers in English literary history, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and T S Eliot. The ceremony took place 31 years to the day since Larkin’s death. </p>
<p>This is an occasion foreseen by Larkin himself, whose place in Poets’ Corner would probably have been guaranteed had he accepted the Poet Laureateship in 1984. Larkin was touted for this role as early as 1972; on that occasion it went to John Betjeman, a poet he admired. When Betjeman died in 1984, Larkin was the obvious choice. He didn’t share the public’s enthusiasm, but was reflective about his place in literary history: “I think there will be a space for me,” he told his mother. </p>
<p>Although a household name – a rare thing in poetry – Larkin had spent three decades dodging attention. Reports of the so-called Hermit of Hull’s reclusiveness were exaggerated, but it’s true that he largely avoided public roles – and what role in British poetry is more public, more bardic, than the laureateship? Larkin wasn’t joking when he told one acquaintance: “I just couldn’t face the 50 letters a day, TV show, representing British Poetry in the ’poetry conference at Belgrade’ side of it all.” To Andrew Motion, a later Laureate, he wrote: “Think of the stamps! Think of the stamps!”</p>
<p>Having politely declined, Larkin knew he had gifted Ted Hughes – a poetic rival – a spot in Westminster Abbey. But when Larkin died the year after, he was already known as Britain’s “unofficial Laureate”. One obituary <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%E2%80%9Cthe+funniest+and+most+intelligent+English+writer+of+the+day%2C+and+the+greatest+living+poet+in+our+language%E2%80%9D+peter+levi&oq=%E2%80%9Cthe+funniest+and+most+intelligent+English+writer+of+the+day%2C+and+the+greatest+living+poet+in+our+language%E2%80%9D+peter+levi&aqs=chrome..69i57.2835j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">hailed him</a> as “the funniest and most intelligent English writer of the day, and the greatest living poet in our language”. Perhaps the spot unveiled in the Abbey was always his. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poets’ Corner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Posthumous scandal</h2>
<p>But this outcome wasn’t always so certain. Scandal in the 1990s threatened to obliterate Larkin’s reputation. The publication of a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books-mr-miseryguts-philip-larkins-letters-show-all-the-grim-humour-that-was-a-hallmark-of-his-great-1558190.html">Selected Letters</a> in 1992, containing foul-mouthed tirades against women, ethnic minorities, and the working-class, was swiftly followed by Motion’s 1993 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/05/poetry.highereducation">biography</a>, which revealed Larkin’s heavy drinking, pornographic habits, and multiple infidelities.</p>
<p>Influential cultural critics rushed to denounce Larkin. Lisa Jardine <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/27/philip-larkin-love-hate-women">lambasted</a> his “Little Englandism”, boasting “we don’t tend to teach Larkin much now in my department of English”. Tom Paulin spoke of Larkin’s “quasi-fascism”, and the “distressing and in many ways revolting compilation which imperfectly reveals and conceals the sewer under the national monument Larkin became”. </p>
<p>This was a troubling and hysterical reaction to biographical disclosures. However regrettable, Larkin’s bigotry was performative and insincere; much of his behaviour was also judged against puritanical moral standards. More pernicious was the reinterpretation of his work in the light of these new perceptions of his life. Bizarrely, poems hitherto loved for their humanity were suddenly dismissed as the eruptions of a bitterly prejudiced man. </p>
<p>Assessments today <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/27/philip-larkin-love-hate-women">tend to be less extreme</a>, but the way we think about Larkin is still jammed somewhere between celebratory and condemnatory impulses. The Philip Larkin Society has campaigned over many years for a Poets’ Corner memorial, but the previous dean rejected this on the grounds of Larkin’s agnosticism, and an unofficial policy requiring writers to be dead for 20 years. </p>
<p>As neither criterion prevented Hughes from being commemorated in 2011, it’s not unreasonable to wonder whether other anxieties were at play. The current dean expressed a different view: “I have no doubt that his work and memory will live on as long as the English language continues to be understood.” His sentiment wisely refocuses attention on what matters most: the poetry.</p>
<h2>Poets’ Corner</h2>
<p>Poets’ Corner is one of the most famous areas of Westminster Abbey. The tradition of burying or commemorating the nation’s best writers there began in the 16th century, when a tomb was erected for Chaucer, buried in the abbey 250 years earlier.</p>
<p>English literary history is extraordinarily diverse, and scholars have subjected its canon – as both a concept and a holding place – to extensive critique since at least the 1980s. But as a reflection of literary history, Poets’ Corner is selective and partial, and it may be a long time before the south transept becomes less male and less white.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chaucer: commemorated because of his day job. Stained glass by Burne Jones, V&A, London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John W. Schulze/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But then it was never “designed”, and chance has played its part in the erratic evolution of this collective memorial as much as cultural conservatism. Chaucer, for example, was buried there because of his day job as clerk of works to the Palace of Westminster; that he wrote The Canterbury Tales had nothing to do with it. And while 2016 has been a year of Shakespearean saturation marking 400 years since The Bard’s death, 124 years went by before the most famous name in English literature entered Poets’ Corner. Larkin’s 31 years isn’t much compared to that. </p>
<p>Larkin’s emotionally ambivalent attitude to Christianity is surely not unique these days. In Church Going, one of his most magnificent works, the narrator finds himself “at a loss”, unable to accept religious “superstition”, or even explain why he visits the church. But something pulls him there nonetheless – perhaps because “so many dead lie round”. Larkin keenly felt his own relation to the poetic dead; a stone bearing his name now lies close to at least two writers he worshipped, Thomas Hardy and D H Lawrence. There is much in Larkin’s work to suggest he would have been moved by this act of “awkward reverence”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Underwood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One of English poetry’s most recognisable voices has been memorialised in Westminster Abbey.James Underwood, Research Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Literature, University of HuddersfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/641562016-10-20T19:16:51Z2016-10-20T19:16:51ZFriday essay: why literary celebrity is a double-edged sword<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142285/original/image-20161019-20333-u5msmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A wax model of Ernest Hemingway at Madame Tussauds in New York.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anton_Ivanov/Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1967, French theorist Roland Barthes famously <a href="http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/Gustafson/FILM%20162.W10/readings/barthes.death.pdf">declared</a> the metaphorical “death of the author” in his essay of the same name. Barthes rejected the Romantic idea of the author as a unique figure of genius. Still, despite his best efforts, this romantic notion of the heroic, solitary wordsmith lives on today. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1319.html">Medieval times</a>, authors were seen as nothing more than craftsmen. But the Romantic poets – Byron, Coleridge, Blake, Shelley – singled out the writer as a figure of “spontaneous creativity”. As academic Clara Tuite <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/210888">has noted</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the Romantic period saw the birth of the literary celebrity, a figure distinguishable from the merely famous author by his or her status as a cultural commodity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This Romantic writer was seen as either a solitary hero, a tragic artist, a melancholy genius - or all three. In the centuries since, famous authors have been both celebrated and panned, adored and ridiculed. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142299/original/image-20161019-20316-e1o1li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142299/original/image-20161019-20316-e1o1li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142299/original/image-20161019-20316-e1o1li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142299/original/image-20161019-20316-e1o1li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142299/original/image-20161019-20316-e1o1li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142299/original/image-20161019-20316-e1o1li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142299/original/image-20161019-20316-e1o1li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142299/original/image-20161019-20316-e1o1li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lord Byron (1788-1824), engraved by H.Robinson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Georgios Kollidas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since Romantic times, we have often expected writers to be detached from the trappings of celebrity culture, aligning their integrity with an anti-commercial attitude. There is, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Star_Authors.html?id=QFcqYIHCfgAC">argues author Joe Moran</a>, a “nostalgia for some kind of transcendent, anti-economic, creative element in a secular, debased, commercialised culture” that we commonly attach to writers.
Indeed theorist Lorraine York <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Literary_Celebrity_in_Canada.html?id=_5HhaFex8BsC&redir_esc=y">has asked</a> if we can even use words like “fame” and “celebrity” to describe writers, “those notorious privacy-seeking, solitary scribblers”. </p>
<p>One of the first to question the idea of literary celebrity was the 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who found his own fame something of a burden.
More recently, authors such as Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, and Dave Eggers have struggled with the desire for popularity and credibility. In today’s internet culture, reaction to a famous writer’s actions or utterances is quick and merciless. Next week, a new author will be thrust into the media spotlight, with the announcement of <a href="http://themanbookerprize.com/fiction">the Booker Prize winner</a>. </p>
<p>Yet interestingly, discussions about the difficulties of being a famous writer rarely include women. The notion of the solitary genius is usually attached to men. A notable exception is the Italian novelist Elena Ferrante – who is famous, ironically, precisely because of her reluctance to engage with literary celebrity. Ferrante writes under a pseudonym, in her words, to “liberate myself from the anxiety of notoriety”. </p>
<p>Ferrante’s recent unmasking by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/03/elena-ferrante-anita-raja-unmasking-publisher-outing-my-brilliant-friend">a literary journalist</a> has unleashed a torrent of condemnation. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"784869671145054208"}"></div></p>
<p>The extent to which her true identity has been picked over shows how our society craves constant closure, often at the expense of creativity and imagination. As Michel Foucault once <a href="http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/Gustafson/FILM%20162.W10/readings/foucault.author.pdf">noted</a>, literary anonymity is “of interest only as a puzzle to be solved”. </p>
<p>Such is the nature of contemporary celebrity culture that many cannot tolerate the idea of writers who prefer anonymity over fame. So those such as Thomas Pynchon, J.D. Salinger and Ferrante, who have evaded the limelight, have been scrutinised as much for their personal lives as their actual works. </p>
<h2>A short history of famous (male) writers</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142289/original/image-20161019-20330-15h0a68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142289/original/image-20161019-20330-15h0a68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142289/original/image-20161019-20330-15h0a68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142289/original/image-20161019-20330-15h0a68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142289/original/image-20161019-20330-15h0a68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142289/original/image-20161019-20330-15h0a68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142289/original/image-20161019-20330-15h0a68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Russian stamp showing Charles Dickens on his 150th birth anniversary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Olga Popova / Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 19th century writers Charles Dickens (hero of the working class) and Mark Twain (America’s most beloved humourist), were plagued with aspects of their fame. While Dickens was often criticised for appealing to the lower classes, Twain <a href="http://www.twainquotes.com/Celebrity.html">likened</a> celebrities to clowns. Celebrity, he said, “is what a boy or a youth longs for more than for any other thing. He would be a clown in a circus […] he would sell himself to Satan, in order to attract attention and be talked about and envied”.</p>
<p>Yet Dickens and Twain also enjoyed their fame. Dickens was renowned for engaging his audiences at public lectures; Twain also went on speaking tours. </p>
<p>If we fast forward half a century or so, we come to Ernest Hemingway – another author who felt imprisoned by his fame. As theorist Leo Braudy <a href="http://leobraudy.com/the-frenzy-of-renown-fame-and-its-history/">puts it</a>, Hemingway was caught between “his genius and its publicity”. In an undated writing fragment, Hemingway <a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/%22Glow-in-the-dark+authors%3A%22+Hemingway's+celebrity+and+legacy+in+under...-a0246955529">wrote</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have reached the point where we are ruled by photographers and agents of publishers and writing is no longer of any importance.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He also called fellow writer F. Scott Fitzgerald a “hack” for writing Hollywood screenplays.</p>
<p>Yet Hemingway nevertheless helped promote the “Hemingway myth”, built around ideals of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7096913-all-man">masculinity</a> and genius. He was frequently photographed outdoors, fishing and hunting, or attending bullfights. </p>
<p>Then there was Norman Mailer, the pugnacious, Jewish author of The Naked and the Dead and Advertisements for Myself. In 1960, Mailer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/arts/adele-mailer-artist-who-married-norman-mailer-dies-at-90.html?_r=0">stabbed and seriously wounded his then-wife, Adele Morales</a> with a pen-knife at a drunken party. (After pleading guilty to a charge of third-degree assault, he received a suspended sentence.)</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142282/original/image-20161019-20324-fg6cqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142282/original/image-20161019-20324-fg6cqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142282/original/image-20161019-20324-fg6cqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142282/original/image-20161019-20324-fg6cqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142282/original/image-20161019-20324-fg6cqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142282/original/image-20161019-20324-fg6cqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142282/original/image-20161019-20324-fg6cqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142282/original/image-20161019-20324-fg6cqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Norman Mailer receives an Austrian decoration for science and art in 2002.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Leonard Foeger/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mailer cultivated a public persona that certainly boosted his fame, but did little for his literary reputation. Many critics accused him of wasting his talents by shamelessly promoting himself; he did frequent TV interviews, including a particularly notorious <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8m9vDRe8fw">appearance</a> on The Dick Cavett Show, where he and Gore Vidal famously butted heads over Mailer’s public profile and ego. </p>
<p>Indeed, Mailer once <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674005907&content=reviews">called himself</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>a node in a new electronic landscape of celebrity, personality and status.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Theorist John Cawelti suggests that unlike Hemingway, who lived out to the end an ambiguous conflict between celebrity and art, Mailer “tried to make his public performances themselves into a kind of artistic exploration”. Mailer frequently wrote about himself in the third-person, in an effort to “perform” himself as a character. </p>
<p>Interestingly, at the same time as all this was happening, <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/jd-salinger-9470070">J.D. Salinger</a>, author of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5107.The_Catcher_in_the_Rye">The Catcher in the Rye</a>, famously was living as a recluse. </p>
<h2>Franzen and Oprah</h2>
<p>In 2001, Oprah Winfrey put Jonathan Franzen’s sprawling family saga <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3805.The_Corrections?from_search=true">The Corrections</a> on her <a href="https://static.oprah.com/images/o2/201608/201608-obc-complete-list-01a.pdf">book club list</a>, encouraging her audience to read it. Franzen was invited onto Oprah’s show. He declined, <a href="http://www.powells.com/blog/interviews/jonathan-franzen-uncorrected/">saying</a> he didn’t want his novel placed alongside “schmaltzy, one-dimensional [books]”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142297/original/image-20161019-20308-1fntotq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142297/original/image-20161019-20308-1fntotq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142297/original/image-20161019-20308-1fntotq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142297/original/image-20161019-20308-1fntotq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142297/original/image-20161019-20308-1fntotq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142297/original/image-20161019-20308-1fntotq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142297/original/image-20161019-20308-1fntotq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142297/original/image-20161019-20308-1fntotq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wolf Gang/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Franzen was widely panned for being a snob. Andre Dubus III, for instance, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/29/books/oprah-gaffe-by-franzen-draws-ire-and-sales.html?pagewanted=all">criticised</a> Franzen’s assumption that “high art is not for the masses, that they won’t understand it and don’t deserve it”. </p>
<p>Media scholar Ian Collinson <a href="https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/everyday-readers-reading-popular-culture-ian-collinson/">sees</a> Franzen’s reaction as a symbolic attempt to separate the television celebrity from the novel, an act of “cultural decontamination”. Franzen, he writes, feared his position within the high-art tradition “would be compromised if his novel were subject to such blatant commercialism”.</p>
<p>Yet nine years later, Franzen <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/sep/16/oprah-winfrey-jonathan-franzen-freedom">apologised</a> to Oprah. He was again invited onto her show, this time to promote his 2010 book <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7905092-freedom">Freedom</a>. He did not refuse a second time. Ironically, many criticised Franzen for succumbing to the allure of popularity. The old assumptions regarding the incompatibility of literature and celebrity resurfaced, with one critic, Macy Halford, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/franzen-meets-oprah">suggesting</a> that “Oprah and Franzen are not terribly compatible personalities”. </p>
<p>This whole saga attests to what Tessa Roynon <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/american-literature/cambridge-introduction-toni-morrison-1">has called</a> the “damned if you don’t, damned if you do” mentality of literary celebrity. Authors are often seen as having to choose between respectability amongst fewer critics, or widespread popularity at the expense of their reputations. (<a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2011/06/literary-celebrity">One article</a> about a speech Franzen gave to students in 2011 was memorably titled, “Touching the hem of Mr Franzen’s garment.”)
Like Mailer, Franzen’s career has been marred by the troubled union between mass media presence and desire for literary acceptance. </p>
<h2>Celebrity and Sincerity: Wallace and Eggers</h2>
<p>One of Franzen’s peers, the late David Foster Wallace, was an author in the Romantic mould; he is associated with the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/11/sincerity-not-irony-is-our-ages-ethos/265466/">“New Sincerity”</a> literary movement, and his 1996 novel <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6759.Infinite_Jest?from_search=true">Infinite Jest</a> has been judged by many as a work of genius. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142298/original/image-20161019-20336-13tkw4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142298/original/image-20161019-20336-13tkw4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142298/original/image-20161019-20336-13tkw4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142298/original/image-20161019-20336-13tkw4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142298/original/image-20161019-20336-13tkw4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142298/original/image-20161019-20336-13tkw4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142298/original/image-20161019-20336-13tkw4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142298/original/image-20161019-20336-13tkw4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A hand-drawn tribute to David Foster Wallace.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steve Rhodes/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2008, Wallace took his own life. Before his death, Wallace was known to have suffered from depression, and he projected an image of the melancholy genius. His opinion of celebrity was less than favourable. His widow Karen Green once <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/10/karen-green-david-foster-wallace-interview">noted</a> in an interview that all of the media attention given to Wallace “turns him into a celebrity writer dude, which I think would have made him wince”.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/16/reviews/wallace-v-profile.html">1996 New York Times piece</a>, Wallace claimed that the “hoopla” of celebrity made him want to become a recluse. The cult of celebrity was something he consistently mocked in his work, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/365145-the-paradoxical-intercourse-of-audience-and-celebrity-the-suppressed-awareness-that">calling</a> celebrities “symbols of themselves” rather than real people. As with Rousseau and Salinger, the logic went that Wallace “deserved his celebrity”, journalist Megan Garber <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/08/david-foster-wallace-the-end-of-the-tour/400928/">writes</a>, specifically because he had not sought it.</p>
<p>Dave Eggers is also part of the “New Sincerity” movement. A writer of serious, sentimental fiction, his books include his debut memoir <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4953.A_Heartbreaking_Work_of_Staggering_Genius?from_search=true">A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius</a>, and <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4952.What_Is_the_What?from_search=true">What is the What?</a>, the fictionalised story of the life of Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng. Eggers also opened the writing centre <a href="http://826valencia.org/about/">Valencia 826</a> in San Francisco, which helps children develop their writing skills (and inspired the <a href="http://www.sydneystoryfactory.org.au/our-inspiration/">Sydney Story Factory</a> and Melbourne’s <a href="http://www.100storybuilding.org.au/">100 Story Building</a>.)</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142291/original/image-20161019-20302-1xjeoh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142291/original/image-20161019-20302-1xjeoh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142291/original/image-20161019-20302-1xjeoh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142291/original/image-20161019-20302-1xjeoh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142291/original/image-20161019-20302-1xjeoh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142291/original/image-20161019-20302-1xjeoh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=707&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142291/original/image-20161019-20302-1xjeoh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=707&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142291/original/image-20161019-20302-1xjeoh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=707&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dave Eggers in 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elliot Margolies/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Early in his career, Eggers often spoke of wanting to retreat into anonymity. Instead, he <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/one-man-zeitgeist-dave-eggers-publishing-and-publicity-9781441117373/">seized</a> the reins of literary celebrity. Some then accused him of hypocrisy – in criticising fame while also inviting it. He has also been criticised for “excessive sincerity”, while journalist David Kirkpatrick <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/14/books/ambivalent-writer-turns-his-memoir-upside-down-denouncing-profits-publishers.html">called</a> Eggers “agonizingly ambivalent”. </p>
<p>Journalist James Sullivan <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Eggers-Surprised-By-Success-Author-to-read-from-2935959.php">notes</a> that Eggers</p>
<blockquote>
<p>treats his celebrity like a gold lamé suit: It’s amusing, absurd and, in his mind, not quite appropriate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, in her reading of Eggers’ 2003 book <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4954.You_Shall_Know_Our_Velocity_?from_search=true">You Shall Know Our Velocity</a>, Caroline Hamilton <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/one-man-zeitgeist-dave-eggers-publishing-and-publicity-9781441117373/">suggests</a> that the central characters “resemble the credibility-obsessed younger Eggers torn between longing for celebrity and legitimacy”. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.armchairnews.com/freelance/eggers.html">2000 email interview</a>, Eggers referred to himself as a sellout for having sold many books and appeared in various magazines. As Hamilton <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/one-man-zeitgeist-dave-eggers-publishing-and-publicity-9781441117373/">writes</a>, the term sellout has less to do with wealth, and more to do with “the popularity that comes with it”.
Celebrity, then, remains a problem for those authors wishing to appear genuine and serious. </p>
<h2>Where are all the women?</h2>
<p>It is striking that female authors are, for the most part, excluded from all these agonised discussions about inner turmoil and perceived loss of prestige. This suggests that women are not often thought of as having substantial reputations in the first place. </p>
<p>Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, for instance, has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jw0Fu8nhOc">frequently appeared</a> on Oprah’s program to discuss her complex, poetically written, novels. In contrast to Franzen, however, Morrison’s credibility was never seen to be compromised in doing so. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142294/original/image-20161019-20330-gdzkaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142294/original/image-20161019-20330-gdzkaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142294/original/image-20161019-20330-gdzkaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142294/original/image-20161019-20330-gdzkaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142294/original/image-20161019-20330-gdzkaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142294/original/image-20161019-20330-gdzkaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142294/original/image-20161019-20330-gdzkaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142294/original/image-20161019-20330-gdzkaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Toni Morrison after being awarded the French Legion of Honour in 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philippe Wojazer/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite the number of talented women writing today for large audiences – Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, and Toni Morrison just to name a few – critics do not often think of female authors as having the kinds of monumental reputations that their male peers possess. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byronic_hero">The Byronic hero</a>, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/5771776/Remembering_Hemingway_The_Endurance_of_the_Hemingway_Myth">the Hemingway legend</a>, and the <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/09/13/behind_the_david_foster_wallace_myth/">Foster Wallace genius</a> are larger-than-life men. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142305/original/image-20161019-20333-y1kpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142305/original/image-20161019-20333-y1kpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142305/original/image-20161019-20333-y1kpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142305/original/image-20161019-20333-y1kpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142305/original/image-20161019-20333-y1kpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142305/original/image-20161019-20333-y1kpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142305/original/image-20161019-20333-y1kpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142305/original/image-20161019-20333-y1kpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Margaret Atwood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Blinch/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women are seldom discussed in such a way – with the possible exception of Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf. Yet this may actually be a blessing for them. Avoiding the expectations that go along with literary celebrity can be an advantage. Female authors may be better able to breach certain boundaries – of genre, style, content – in ways that certain male authors cannot. </p>
<p>Ferrante, for instance, said she explicitly needed anonymity to write honestly. While some may see it as a bizarre sort of compliment to her that she is so intriguing that an Italian journalist spent weeks combing financial and property records to unmask her, she surely deserved the right to her privacy to focus on her own work. </p>
<p>Some of the most interesting genre-defying authors writing today are women such as Morrison, Atwood, and Emily St. John Mandel. Perhaps, then, female authors can more seamlessly defy stringent boundaries that continue to define the literary world when they are not hailed as heroic geniuses.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64156/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siobhan Lyons does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bob Dylan is now a literary celebrity. And next week, the Booker Prize judges will anoint another. The tag is still chiefly attached to men but women authors shouldn’t despair: fame and good writing can be uneasy bedfellows.Siobhan Lyons, Tutor in Media and Cultural Studies, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/515342016-03-14T10:06:32Z2016-03-14T10:06:32ZInspired by Kim Kardashian, a feverish legion of followers struggle to achieve online fame<p>When Kim Kardashian <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/07/kim-kardashian-s-nude-pic-breaks-the-internet-again.html">“broke the Internet”</a> with her nude selfie last week, it was the latest stunt by a socialite who has become an object of fascination in our celebrity-obsessed culture.</p>
<p><a href="https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/everyone-gets-their-15-minutes-of-fame-but-what-about-those-who-make-theirs-last-a-lifetime">While some deride her</a> as being “famous for being famous,” I see someone who works intensely hard at what I’ve termed <a href="http://nyupress.org/books/9781479864775/">glamour labor</a>. </p>
<p>Glamour labor is a phenomenon of the Internet age. It means investing time and effort into editing the body and self to appear as fascinating and polished in person as in one’s highly scripted, filtered and manipulated online life. It means shaping the body (by going to the gym or the salon), while simultaneously crafting one’s online image – all to appear to have achieved an elusive ideal of attractiveness. </p>
<p>Those who epitomize the ideal are rewarded by large followings (Kim Kardashian has more than 60 million <a href="https://www.instagram.com/kimkardashian/?hl=en">on Instagram</a>), endorsement deals (the Blonde Salad blogger Chiara Ferragni <a href="http://www.refinery29.com/2015/02/82791/the-blonde-salad-harvard-case-study">earns US$8 million a year</a>) and sometimes even an <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/construction-high-fashion-instagram-helped-male-model-discovered/story?id=29253900">actual paying job</a>. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the pleasures of glamour – fame, swag and VIP access – often obscure its costs. </p>
<p>I came across the practice of glamour labor while interviewing fashion models for my book <a href="http://nyupress.org/books/9780814794180/"><em>This Year’s Model: Fashion, Media, and the Making of Glamour</em></a>. They told me that modeling work involved far more than merely smiling for the camera. It entails constant self-promotion and the adoption of a “CEO of Me” mentality that has become alarmingly common across many industries. </p>
<h2>The currency of ‘cool’</h2>
<p>There was a time in our economic history when workers could expect long-term employment capped off by a pension. But in recent decades, many of these good, stable jobs have disappeared. </p>
<p>Today, people are finding they have to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2014/12/14/the-devalued-american-worker/">work more for less</a>. If the job is in a “hot” industry – publishing, fashion, and theater – many are now <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/unpaid-intern-economy-rides-backs-young-women-1-180951540/?no-ist">willing to work for nothing at all</a>.</p>
<p>Communication scholar Mark Deuze notes how people now live <em>in</em> media, experiencing a <a href="http://mcs.sagepub.com/content/33/1/137.extract">“liquid life”</a> characterized by a volatile mix of work, consumption and play that renders them in a perpetual state of “flux and uncertainty” about their future. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, labor researchers David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker point out how autonomous work fosters <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=0UmE2Hse9AUC&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=work+in+media+industries&ots=nK_YYNl6z5&sig=lPHZYLDKFfzeG9U13O5y7leswqg#v=onepage&q=work%20in%20media%20industries&f=false">self-exploitation</a>. And sociologists like Gina Neff have shown how <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gina_Neff/publication/251735374_Entrepreneurial_Labor_among_Cultural_Producers_Cool_Jobs_in_Hot_Industries/links/55475d190cf23ff716872198.pdf">“cool jobs in hot industries”</a> lure people into working too hard and too much for diminishing returns.</p>
<p>The result? A <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/business/rising-economic-insecurity-tied-to-decades-long-trend-in-employment-practices.html?ref=business">gig economy</a> that has workers struggling to patch together a viable living. Rather than adhering to a standard 9-to-5 work schedule, the norm for many has become all work, all the time, with only some of it paid. </p>
<h2>If Kim can do it, can you?</h2>
<p>Nothing ventured, nothing gained: that is glamour labor’s promise and its curse. Glittery celebrities and models lure regular people into thinking glamour labor can be a way to achieve social and financial success. </p>
<p>Social media feeds from Kim and her cohort – model <a href="https://www.instagram.com/caradelevingne/">Cara Delevigne</a>, singer <a href="https://www.instagram.com/beyonce/">Beyonce</a> and actor <a href="https://www.instagram.com/selenagomez/">Selena Gomez</a> – seem like innocent fun. </p>
<p>Yet they all adhere to a similar script, and underneath their breezy confidence and glossy, girlfriend-y rapport is feverish calculation: sharing intimate moments, constantly shopping for and documenting one’s purchases and travels, and tracking “likes” – all with phone constantly in hand. </p>
<p>Kim K.’s curvy, diminutive persona encapsulates a modified, popular version of the American Dream – that anyone can make it big in America, achieving fame and glory if they just work hard enough – regardless of how ridiculously impossible it is to achieve. The daughter of a self-made lawyer and businessman, Kardashian is certainly a hard worker: her ubiquitous image is the result of countless red carpet appearances and strategic selfies. </p>
<p>Lest we think she “just woke up that way,” Kardashian readily shares her secrets, democratically suggesting that anyone can look like her: just follow the directions of her makeup tutorial, or shop for the look (for less!) <a href="https://www.kimkardashianwest.com/style/369-kim-kardashian-goddess-moment-instyle-awards/">on her website</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wEnUe-NBfHk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">How to look just like Kim!</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Empty promises</h2>
<p>Pressures for intense self-promotion and management – common in modeling and other glamour industries – take on an urgency in the digital age. </p>
<p>While an untested modeling newbie might once have landed a big campaign on the basis of a few test shots, models now <a href="http://stylecaster.com/social-media-for-models/">must</a> populate their social media feed with attractive images of themselves and gain a large network of followers <a href="http://www.complex.com/style/2015/04/models-better-have-at-least-10000-followers-on-instagram-to-book-their-next-gig">just to be eligible</a> for such a booking. </p>
<p>Across many creative fields (art, music, film, media), institutions once shared the risks with aspirants. Movie studios and modeling agencies would offer contracts to raw talent, and then use their marketing capabilities to train them for success. </p>
<p>Now the burden of risk is shifting to individuals. </p>
<p>Communication scholar Gina Neff described this process as the rise of <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/venture-labor">“venture labor,”</a> where the imperative to “give it your all” to “have it all” spreads via social media. </p>
<p>As Kim Kardashian <a href="http://www.ranthollywood.com/2015/05/11/10-times-kim-kardashian-said-something-that-made-us-hate-her-a-little-less/">preached</a> to her fans:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I don’t feel confident about my body, I’m not going to sit at home and feel sorry for myself and not do something about it. It’s all about taking action and not being lazy. So you do the work, whether it’s fitness or whatever. It’s about getting up, motivating yourself and just doing it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With Kim Kardashian and model Gigi Hadid leading the way, the promise of fame or money lures many to put themselves out there – working for free (via internships and spec work), broadcasting yourself (as in the case of <a href="http://fusion.net/story/244545/famous-and-broke-on-youtube-instagram-social-media/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits">famous but broke</a> YouTube stars like <a href="http://www.brittanyashleycomedy.com">Brittany Ashley</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/AConMann">Connor Manning</a>), or spending all your time crafting a curated online life that looks great on camera but is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/03/instagram-star-essena-oneill-quits-2d-life-to-reveal-true-story-behind-images">otherwise unbearable</a>. </p>
<p>Forget job stability, health insurance, or even pay: if you can be accepted into the media machine’s fold, you’re one step closer to the glittery riches it promises all. </p>
<p>While few are rewarded, many feel increasingly pressured to play this losing game. Even though the game is rigged, in our society <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-pervasive-anti-millennial-sentiment-has-hurt-the-cause-of-student-protesters-51234">the individual is almost always blamed</a> for his or her failure. If you complain about racism, classism or sexism, it means you’re making excuses and not working hard enough. It’s up to you to fix your life and build your brand. </p>
<p>What’s so crazy about wanting to be famous, anyway? As communication scholar Alison Hearn <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=X4YKc5PQdP0C&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=Hearn+sentimental+greenbacks&source=bl&ots=NbOvojqkHp&sig=g3lXCaU7nEuTpNWWvi92bEFJmGI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjC1pHI1r_JAhVCYyYKHcbJCmcQ6AEINjAF">notes</a>, when nothing is certain, especially a paycheck, “achieving celebrity status has come to seem as reasonable a life goal as any other.” </p>
<h2>Exposed – for what?</h2>
<p>How did we get here? Of course, there’s more to the story than young girls duck-facing in the bathroom. </p>
<p>Kim K. and her ilk show us that the path to social legitimacy, acceptance and employment is achieved through working hard to be gorgeous and achieve notoriety. The Kardashians make the work of exposure – getting it, doing it, managing its impact – look like fun, like something we should all strive for. </p>
<p>Oversharing (a Kardashian specialty) takes on a glamorous sheen when coupled with the trappings of the family’s celebrity lifestyle. The Kardashians’ joyful abdication of the right to any privacy paves the way toward normalizing its loss, drawing us into the world where the “‘likes,’ clicks and tweets that can be earned by sharing” seduce us into what social scientist Bernard Harcourt <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/A-Mad-Frenzy-of-Disclosure/234338">called</a> a “mad frenzy of disclosure.” </p>
<p>Self-tracking these “likes” and retweets taps a voracious desire for self-improvement, which fuels glamour labor. It provides new fodder for online self-documentation as we post our Fitbit step counts, tweet our opinions, Facebook our vacation and Instragram our lunch. </p>
<p>Insidiously, our loss of privacy is what the Kardashians hide in plain sight. Glamour laboring to chase an ever-receding ideal of looking right, feeling right or being in the right circle leaves us as routinely exposed as Kim Kardashian’s backside.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51534/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Wissinger is affiliated with Data & Society research institute. </span></em></p>Glamour labor is a phenomenon of the digital age, which is radically changing the way we think about work, success and privacy.Elizabeth Wissinger, Professor of Fashion Studies, CUNY Graduate CenterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.