To enable readers to grasp the cumulative complexity of contemporary celebrity culture, this book explores dynamics of the celebrity experience in recent centuries and up to the present day.

For the typical celebrity, living in the limelight has never been particularly easy, and it seems to be getting harder every day. Although celebrity in the current century is similar to how it has been experienced in the past, the widespread availability of the Internet and its endless innovative potentialities have certainly brought about changes and new challenges. Today, it is not uncommon for this seemingly desirable cult of personality to, at times, take on an unexpected life of its own, sweeping unprepared celebrities along for the ride. To enable readers to grasp the cumulative complexity of contemporary celebrity culture, this book explores dynamics of the celebrity experience in recent centuries and up to the present day. In doing so, it explicitly analyses ever-changing phenomena of relevance to the celebrity experience, the importance and impact of fans and fandom(s), and the various pleasures and pitfalls that celebrities regularly encounter.

Disassembling the Celebrity Figure: Credibility and the Incredible questions the credibility of celebrity brands, exploring how fandoms depend on perceptions and representations of authenticity. It asks how authenticity is projected by global celebrities, and how fans consume these carefully curated personas, and explores how the media breaks down barriers between celebrities and fans. It presents a discussion of celebrities as brands, exploring how their images are maintained after they pass away. It also offers analysis of the ways in which historical figures are later reconstructed as celebrities, and explores how their images are circulated and consumed across contemporary media. Ultimately, the book examines authenticity in celebrity culture by looking at fandom, media representation, branding and celebrity deaths. Contributors are Marie Josephine Bennett, Lise Dilling-Nielsen, Kylo-Patrick R. Hart, Mingyi Hou, Renata Iwicka, Ephraim Das Janssen, Magdalen Wing-Chi Ki, Celia Lam, Mirella Longo, Aliah Mansor, Jackie Raphael and Millicent Weber.

Narratives of place link people and geographic location with a cultural imaginary through literature and visual narration. Contemporary literature and film often frame narratives with specific geographic locations, which saturate the narrative with cultural meanings in relation to natural and man-made landscapes. This interdisciplinary collection seeks to interrogate such connections to probe how place is narrativized in literature and film. Utilizing close readings of specific filmic and literary texts, all chapters serve to tease out cultural and historical meanings in respect of human engagement with landscapes. Always mindful of national, cultural and topographical specificity, the book is structured around five core themes: Contested Histories of Place; Environmental Landscapes; Cityscapes; The Social Construction of Place; and Landscapes of Belonging.

Australia holds a unique place in the global scheme of fandom. Much of the media consumed by Australian audiences originates from either the United States or the United Kingdom, yet several Australian productions have also attracted international fans in their own right. This first-ever academic study of Australian fandom explores the national popular culture scene through themes of localization and globalization. The essays within reveal how Australian audiences often seek authentic imports and eagerly embrace different cultures, examining both Hollywood’s influence on Australian fandom and Australian fan reactions to non-Western content. By shining a spotlight on Australian fandom, this book not only provides an important case study for fan studies scholars, it also helps add nuance to a field whose current literature is predominantly U.S. and U.K. focused. Contributors: Kate Ames, Ahmet Atay, Jessica Carniel, Toija Cinque, Ian Dixon, Leigh Edmonds, Sharon Elkind, Jacqui Ewart, Lincoln Geraghty, Sarah Keith, Emerald L. King, Renee Middlemost

Babes in Toyland was one of the most influential and underrated bands of the 1990s. They rode the wave of the Minneapolis grunge scene crafting a unique sound composed of self-taught instrumentation and unabashed banshee raging vocals. Their stage presence was enigmatic, their lyrics vitriolic, and their Kinderwhore fashion ironic and easy to emulate. But what made them most inspiring was their ethos and a unique brand of sisterhood that inspired fans to create Riot Grrl and form legendary bands such as 7 year Bitch, Bikini Kill, and Hole. Despite the media's politicization of them as an "all-female" band, the Babes insisted their music wasn't a political statement but about personal expression. They would dismiss labeling their act as feminist, but their actions sent a positive message of what a female space within music could look like. Now, almost 30 years after their most seminal record, Fontanelle, was released, the legend of the band is being resurrected and re-spun to reclaim their proper space and context in the history of music and women in rock.

The Virginity of Famous Men, award-winning story writer Christine Sneed's deeply perceptive collection on the human condition, features protagonists attempting to make peace with the choices--both personal and professional--they have so far made. In “The Prettiest Girls,” a location scout for a Hollywood film studio falls in love with a young Mexican woman who is more in love with the idea of stardom than with this older American man who takes her with him back to California. “Clear Conscience” focuses on the themes of family loyalty, divorce, motherhood, and whether “doing the right thing” is, in fact, always the right thing to do. In “Beach Vacation,” a mother realizes that her popular and coddled teenage son has become someone she has difficulty relating to, let alone loving with the same maternal fervor that once was second nature to her. The title story, “The Virginity of Famous Men,” explores family and fortune. Long intrigued by love and loneliness, Sneed leads readers through emotional landscapes both familiar and uncharted. These probing stories are explorations of the compassionate and passionate impulses that are inherent in--and often the source of--both abiding joy and serious distress in every human life.

Companion to Celebrity presents a multi-disciplinary collection of original essays that explore myriad issues relating to the origins, evolution, and current trends in the field of celebrity studies. Offers a detailed, systematic, and clear presentation of all aspects of celebrity studies, with a structure that carefully build its enquiry Draws on the latest scholarly developments in celebrity analyses Presents new and provocative ways of exploring celebrity’s meanings and textures Considers the revolutionary ways in which new social media have impacted on the production and consumption of celebrity

Exploring the transition of celebrities into institutional-electoral politics, the book argues that many insights developed by genre theorists could be highly instrumental to understand the celebrity politics phenomenon. It analyzes the historical and cultural specificity of celebrity politics as it evolved through different countries and cultures.

Why do so many people care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? What are the privileges and pleasures of fandom? Do celebrities ever deserve the outsized attention they receive? In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable. Drawing on scrapbooks, personal diaries, and vintage fan mail, Marcus traces celebrity culture back to its nineteenth-century roots, when people the world over found themselves captivated by celebrity chefs, bad-boy poets, and actors such as the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), as famous in her day as the Beatles in theirs. Known in her youth for sleeping in a coffin, hailed in maturity as a woman of genius, Bernhardt became a global superstar thanks to savvy engagement with her era's most innovative media and technologies: the popular press, commercial photography, and speedy new forms of travel. Whether you love celebrity culture or hate it, The Drama of Celebrity will change how you think about one of the most important phenomena of modern times.