In the limelight and under the microscope
Subtitle: forms and functions of female celebrity
By: edited by Su Holmes and Diane Negra
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 339
ISBN-13: 9781441154958; 9780826438553
Description: "This timely collection explores the politics of female celebrity across a range of contemporary and historical media contexts. Amidst concerns about the apparent 'decline' in the currency of modern fame ('famous for being famous'), as well as debates about the shifting parameters of public/private visibility, it is female celebrities who are positioned as the most active discursive terrain. This collection seeks to interrogate such phenomena by forging a greater conceptual, theoretical and historical dialogue between celebrity studies and critical gender studies. It takes as its starting point the understanding that female celebrity is a particularly fraught cultural phenomenon with ideological and industrial implications that warrant careful scrutiny. In moving across case studies from the 19th century to the present day, this book works from the assumption that the case study should play a crucial role in generating debate about the dialogue between 'past' and 'present', and the individual essays seek to reflect this spirit of enquiry"--Bloomsbury Publishing.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : in the limelight and under the microscope : forms and functions of female celebrity? / Su Holmes and Diane Negra; title: Mrs. Langtry seems to be on the way to a fortune : the Jersey lily and models of nineteenth-century fame / Catherine Hindson; title: Helen Keller, Hollywood and political celebrity / Abigail Salerno; title: Bloody blondes and bobbed-haired bandits : executing justice and constructing celebrity criminals in the 1920s popular press / April Miller; title: "Rocket scientist" : the posthumous celebrity of Hedy Lamarr / Ruth Barton; title: Grotesquerie as marker of success in aging female stars / Anne Morey; title: Mia Farrow in the 1960s : categorically intangible? / Leslie Abramson; title: The "right" kind of fame : celebrity culture and the structuring of young women's fantasies of success / Kim Allen; title: Don't let Sofia's littleness and quietness confuse you : Sofia Coppola as persona, brand and text / Caitlin Lewis; title: The insanity plea : female celebrities, reality media and the pyschopathology of British pop-feminism / Emma Bell; title: The horror of something to see : celebrity "Vaginas" as prostheses / Margaret Schwartz; title: Strengthening as they undermine : Rachel Maddow and Suze Orman's homonormative lesbian identities / Joselyn Leimbach; title: Living the hills life : Lauren Conrad as reality Star, soap opera heroine, and brand / Alice Leppert and Julie Wilson; title: Discourses of censorship, immigration and terrorism : exploring the politics of crossing over through the transnational stardom of M.I.A. / Candice Haddad; title: We love this trainwreck! : sacrificing Britney to save America / Anna Fisher.