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The University of San Francisco USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center Sociology College of Arts and Sciences 2011 The nU watched Life Is Not worth Living: The Elevation of the Ordinary in Celebrity Culture Joshua Gamson University of San Francisco, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.usfca.edu/soc Part of the Sociology Commons, and the Television Commons Recommended Citation Gamson, J. (2011). The unwatched life is not worth living: The lee vation of the ordinary in celebrity culture. PMLA, 126(4), 1061-1069. doi:10.1632/pmla.2011.126.4.1061 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sociology by an authorized administrator of USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 126.4 ] theories and methodologies The Unwatched Life Is Not Worth Living: The Elevation WHEN MY FIRST DAUGHTER WAS BORN A FEW YEARS AGO, I ENTERED A CELEBRITY NEWS BLACKOUT, A SOMEWHAT DISCOMFITING CONDITION of the Ordinary in for a sociologist of celebrity. When she entered preschool, though, Celebrity Culture I resubscribed to Us Weekly and devoured its morsels like a starv- ing man at McDonald’s: Kim Kardashian and her then- boyfriend ate at Chipotle on their irst date! Ashton Kutcher was mad about his joshua gamson neighbor’s noisy construction! Lindsay Lohan is back in rehab! I felt less disconnected from others, comforted by the familiar company, a little dirtier and a little lighter. I meandered through online celebrity culture, too, where things were not quite as familiar, visiting mean Internet gossip sites like Gawker and PerezHilton .com and listening to remixes of Christian Bale’s foul- mouthed rant at a cameraman. I also watched an array of YouTube celebrities, most of whom had been adopted by fans for some quirk they’d exhibited intentionally or just by living their lives: Tay Zonday, a tiny PhD candidate with a giant singing voice; the jumbo Yosemite dweller whose awed response to a double rainbow was viewed over twenty million times; and Antoine Dodson, whose interview clip from a local news show (“hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your husband, cause they raping everybody out here”) was a YouTube sensation, leading to remixes on iTunes, a T- shirt line, a ringtone, and Halloween costumes. Via Twitter, I could receive a bar- rage of 140- character tidbits from celebrities, such as info about Tina JOSHUA GAMSON, professor of sociol- Fey’s lunch (Caramello bar), Demi Moore’s adoption rumor (false), ogy at the University of San Francisco, and her daughter Rumer’s highway experience (“Two words: Traf- is the author of Claims to Fame: Celebrity ic sucks”). If returning to celebrity culture was a bit like coming in Contemporary America (U of Califor- home—I’d written a book on the subject, Claims to Fame, back in the nia P, 1994), Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid 1990s—that home also seemed to have been signiicantly remodeled. Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity his essay maps that perplexing architecture, considering how and (U of Chi cago P, 1998), and The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the Sev- with what signiicance twenty- irst- century American celebrity cul- enties in San Francisco (Picador–H. Holt, ture builds on and departs from earlier forms.1 In particular, I high- 2005). A recent Gug gen heim fellow, he light what is arguably the most prominent development in American is working on a book about unconven- celebrity culture over the past two decades: the decisive turn toward the tional family creation. [ © 2011 by the modern language association of america ] 1061 1062 The Unwatched Life Is Not Worth Living [ PMLA ordinary. As opposed to earlier periods, when pacity to attract and mobilize attention, which American celebrities were a class of people per- is then typically attached to other products ceived as extraordinary and treated to extraor- (a television show, a magazine cover, a rec­ dinary lives—a “powerless elite,” as Francesco ord album) or sold for cash directly to people Alberoni once called them—celebrity culture is making those other products. In its most con­ increasingly populated by unexceptional people ventional form, celebrity in the United States who have become famous and by stars who have emerges from, and is managed by, a tightly been made ordinary. What are the roots and controlled, well­ resourced industry, linked contours of this cultural transformation? What institutions centered mostly in Los Angeles are we to make of the triumph of the ordinary and New York. From those centers, oten in a celebrity, of what Graeme Turner has called the conlict­ ridden negotiation between publicists theories and methodologies methodologies and theories “demotic turn” in celebrity culture (82)? and journalists (Gamson, Claims, chs. 3–5), The tension between the extraordinary the stories of celebrity arise: not just about fa­ and the ordinary in American celebrity cul- mous people but about fame as well, about the ture—and, relatedly, between merit and man- machinery of publicity, about what is and isn’t ufacture, authenticity and fakery—is not new admirable, about distinguishing the real from (Gamson, Claims, chs. 1–2; Braudy). Yet the the fake, the private self from the publicly pre­ emergence of reality TV and of the Internet, sented one. Consumers of celebrity culture especially Web 2.0 phenomena, has pushed then do all sorts of things with these stories, ordinariness into the cultural forefront. In oten giving them new meanings. Some make what follows, I document the propulsion of use of celebrity stories to fantasize a diferent ordinary folks into stardom, the focus on life, to construct their identities, or to model the ordinary lives of famous people, and themselves on people they admire or envy; the rise of new celebrity types. Although it others use them as fodder for connecting so­ is tempting to interpret these developments cially with one another, by gossiping with im­ as uniformly democratizing, I argue that punity about the behavior and relationships they are met also with pullbacks toward the of these commonly held igures; still others centralized celebrity industry and may even use the stories to have conversations in which reinforce the rarity and value of the “extraor- they attempt to distinguish the real person dinary” celebrity. In the end, the signiicance from the mass­ produced commodity (Gam­ of the ordinary in celebrity culture is found son, Claims, chs. 6–8; Turner, pt. 3). not so much in what it reveals about how Within this cultural system, which re­ fame is diferently produced as in its harmony mains very much intact, ordinariness has a with the increased expectation, and everyday long, complex, and vexed history. Some critics experience, of being watched. have argued that celebrity by deinition dis­ connects exceptionality from fame; in what is perhaps the foundational text of “celebrity Twentieth- Century Celebrity Culture: studies,” Daniel Boorstin argues that celebri­ Ordinariness as a Persistent Theme ties are “human pseudo­ events,” people who he analytic categories with which celebrity are “ well­ known for their well­ knownness” is best apprehended remain useful even in the (67), as opposed to heroes, who were famous midst of change: celebrity culture is at once for doing great things. As Leo Braudy has am­ a commodity system, an industry, a set of ply demonstrated, fame never simply resulted stories, and a participatory culture. he com­ from heroic action; yet one need only look modity at stake is embodied attention; the as far as Paris Hilton, or her foremother Zsa value of the celebrity inheres in his or her ca­ Zsa Gabor, to see that the modern celebrity 126.4 ] Joshua Gamson 1063 system has the wherewithal, incentives, and celebrity production was tightly controlled, methodologies and theories tendency to value visibility in and of itself. To it was possible to build and maintain images do its work, the celebrity industry certainly of extraordinariness (deCordova). After its doesn’t need its celebrities to be extraordinary. demise, beginning with antitrust actions in What the celebrity industry does require of its the late 1940s, celebrity production became humans is that they live, whether glamorously dispersed among a greater number of inter- or not, for the camera. As Neal Gabler sug- ested parties and the control of images and gests, what distinguishes celebrities—most stories more conlict- ridden. Celebrity pro- of whom are actually known for something duction also became more visible, heighten- they’ve done—is narrative: a celebrity stars ing the suspicion that celebrity status was in his or her own “life movie” and provides artiicially produced and undeserved. Here entertainment by “the very process of living” displays of ordinariness quickly took a cen- (5). In this system, there has long been plenty tral place, ofering up the “real” self behind of room for ordinariness to lourish. the “manufactured” celebrity image, with im- Indeed, the story lines of American celeb- ages of famous people’s “everyday lives” as the rity culture have been built on a set of tensions means to approximate that realness (Gamson, in which ordinariness plays a crucial role. Claims, chs. 1–2). American culture, at least as an ideological he most common narrative strategy— environment, is oten hostile toward anything “come see what they’re really like”—invites resembling aristocracy, which conlicts with identification with celebrities. The sugges- egalitarian beliefs. he presence of a celebrity tion that celebrities are ordinary folks ofers, class has thus presented a bit of a problem.

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