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novels such as Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil (1845) and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848). This chapter explores the media through which popular politicians entered the public consciousness way beyond their immediate followers and hero-worshippers. In the broader public sphere, individuals had far less control over how they were presented than they did in campaign newspapers such as the League or the Northern Star . Unlike the category of ‘hero’, which is implicitly value-laden and denotes an individual who is widely admired, the category of ‘celebrity’ also
Celebrities, heroes and champions explores the role of the popular politician across a range of political movements and wider British and Irish society from the Napoleonic Wars to the Second Reform Act of 1867. Encompassing the parliamentary reform movements of Francis Burdett, Henry Hunt and the Chartists; Daniel O’Connell’s campaigns for Catholic Emancipation and Repeal of the Union; the transatlantic anti-slavery movement; and the Anti-Corn Law League, it offers a rare comparative perspective on the popular politics of the time. It examines the construction and dissemination of public reputations, as well as the impact of fame on those individuals and their dependents. Building on recent developments in the study of historical and contemporary fame, it argues that popular politicians were revered as heroes by their followers and became personally synonymous with both the aims and values of the causes they espoused. However, through the commercialisation of their images and the burgeoning markets for information and entertainment, they also became part of an international culture of celebrity, encapsulated by the rapturous receptions accorded to the romantic continental revolutionaries Lajos Kossuth and Giuseppe Garibaldi.
passed before Judith Williamson challenged Muggeridge by claiming that this celebrity melodrama could actually serve the Crown and the ideology of national unity that it represents. Writing just after the protracted strike that failed to halt the closure of Britain’s coal mines in 1984, Williamson observed that the pitmen’s wives sought the Queen’s support for their cause in the belief that she cared
Despite the currency of the term, when applied to film stardom or celebrity ‘transmedia’ is not a new concept. Sarka Gmiterkova traces the origin of transmedia celebrity and stardom to the 1930s when a ‘carefully orchestrated’ star system first appeared: ‘Central to such scheme was a narrative dispersed across movies, promotion campaigns, and publicity, and which also influenced a portfolio of carefully selected products endorsed by the star’ (116). As Richard Dyer points out, all stars are essentially transmedia: ‘Star images are always extensive, multimedia
7 Young citizens and celebrity politicians If the last chapter was about how young people use popular culture to think about the ‘real world’ and the way it works, then this chapter is about those who are (or might be) charged with running it. The topic is the politician, and how young people – in their talk about popular culture – reflect upon what is required of a politician and who is equipped to deliver on this responsibility. In particular: do celebrities make good representative politicians? The idea of the celebrity politician, at least in the sense we
Celebrities and millionaires 5. Jack Russell (1795–1883) Hunting 6. Edwin Landseer (1802–73) Canine Characters 7. Harry Panmure Gordon (1837–1902) and J. P. Morgan (1837–1913) Collies 8. Alice Stennard Robinson (1852–1932) Ladies Kennel Association In Victorian Britain the press grew in terms of number of titles, types of publication and readership numbers. Always seeking to attract readers, editors sought colourful stories with flamboyant individuals and in doing so created
Introduction This forum brings together a diverse group of scholars from political geography, international relations, critical organisation studies, global development, international studies and political sociology to explore the debates and dynamics of celebrity engagement with development and humanitarianism. The contributions here come from a series of roundtables organised in 2021, including one at the 6th World Conference on Humanitarian
Vadim Kozin is a popular Soviet singer whose appearance on stage makes crowds go wild. Despite his success, Kozin is not happy. He is struggling with his sexual attraction to other men. The secret police are well aware of his proclivities but do not touch him. This all changes when, one day, the feared chief of the secret police, Lavrentii Beria, invites Kozin to his Moscow residence and asks him to sing something for Stalin. Kozin dares to refuse. Chief Beria loves to rape women and does so with impunity. He hates homosexuals, even if they are celebrities.
Introduction The promotion of female entrepreneurship in the global South has animated a great deal of feminist research on the World Bank, public-private partnerships and celebrity-endorsed initiatives. Hingeing on a ‘business case for gender equality’, it recasts the ‘Third World Woman’ ( Mohanty, 1984 ) as agentic and endlessly enterprising ( Wilson, 2011 ; Altan-Olcay, 2016 ; Roberts and Zulfiqar, 2019 ). Recent scholarship, however
‘The Gothic Aesthetics of Eminem’ examines key videos, lyrics, and performances of the white hip-hop celebrity, noting the reoccurrence of such Gothic tropes and narrational strategies as self-replication, the spectacle of monstrous proliferation, the spread of fakery and the counterfeit, as well as the abjection of women. The authors compare Stoker‘s Dracula to Eminem, whose cultural menace similarly functions to proselytise white young men into clones, refracting the racial and sexual anxieties of Stoker‘s novel. The article moves from a consideration of the rapper‘s songs and videos ‘My Name Is’, ‘The Real Slim Shady,’ and ‘Stan’ to the film, 8 Mile.