Week 12
Celebrity Culture
Paris Hilton Inc. (CBC Doc Zone, 2007)
‘infotainment’ or ‘pseudo news’
The ‘televised circus’ and the ‘circus freak show’ (Hoppenstand, 2007)
How celebrity gossip is framed
Celebrity culture is trivial?
- What sorts of useful things does it say about society? Do we take it
seriously, does it tell us something about social order or is it just “vegging
out” for pleasure?
Infotainment = information and entertainment
- Way of framing culture
Pseudo news = news that pretends to be real
- Way of framing culture, pretends to be real and legit
Televised circus = the circus is out of control; something that doesn’t require a lot
of thought to enjoy (think about pleasure and vegging out)
- Way of framing celebrity culture; doesn’t require a lot of thought to enjoy
Circus freak show = freaks have low cultural and social capital; freaks are different
from the rest of us
-Freaks not given lots of respect low social and cultural capital
- Use/judge them to get a better sense of ourselves
- Unpredictable/unscripted
- Watching the bearded lady brush her magnificent hair
Industry Point of View
-Celebrity lives are played up, silly/trivial
Celebrity culture and coverage of it is serious
Para-social relationships
-^ the relationships that we, the audience, believe we have with celebrities
- Involves feeling like we have a close connection with celebrities
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