412: Stars + Celebrity

For my last supplemental response to this wonderful class, I just wanted to discuss something we did not have time for while discussing influencers in the new social media era.  As Zoe Glatt pointed out in her article, I cannot think about social media and influencers without thinking about precarity. I know we go fast to some celebrities who expose images of success and richness, but I have a hard time believing that. While there are cases of some influencers who, out of the blue, achieved popularity that allowed them to be economically successful, this is not true for the vast majority.   From a critical perspective, influencers have become cheap advertisements for larger groups. If we leave the big names aside, most influencers struggle to reach brands, fight for the right content, and invest much time in producing and spreading their content. And the economic returns are quite limited on many occasions. To be a good influencer is to know how to balance  that public  life with notio

**I was unable to initially comment on this post for some reason and our TA said that I should post it as its own post. Thanks!** Hi Diana! I think you brought up some really interesting points. When you question if men are also targeted by capitalist consumerism at the end, I immediately thought about a discussion that I had in a previous class. In the reading “Reading the Code(s)” by Patricia White, the author states that the industry “worked to maximize profit and to define and maintain particular women's roles as consumers, sexualized spectacles, and domestic subjects within a patriarchal, white-dominant, culturally imperialist nation.(White 3)" I thought this was prevalent to this class and your post in particular, as we are able to see how calculated the industry was in putting women in particular into the box of consumers. In my opinion, making women solely consumers further objectifies them. It belittles them as an individual in the sense that all they can do is take f

I’m so happy that my last supplemental post gets to be about a star sighting I had :) Last week as I was heading to my SWMS class in Annenberg, I saw that a speaker event was set up but paid it no mind since I was entering the building from the back entrance. As I walked to the second level, I swore I recognized the voice of the speaker – I looked down and was immediately floored – none other than Jane Fonda was sitting in Annenberg, in the flesh, talking about climate issues. I ran. I don’t know if my heart has ever beat so fast. The professor from my class was already there and as I slipped into an empty spot next to her, we both gaped at each other in disbelief. She was just stunningly vibrant. I felt like I could feel the passion radiating from her soul every moment she spoke. She dropped statistics and percentages and historical facts like they were nothing and wove in her own personal anecdotes and stories masterfully. So self-aware and lucid, and so, so beautiful. I have t

As we have studied in this class, female gender expectations have historically been created and maintained through film stars, characters, and troupes. However, this line becomes blurred as everyday people are entering the limelight by portraying their daily life. Influential figures are no longer distant people in the world, but people that audiences can directly compare themselves to without the excuse that they’re just staged or scripted. This can be especially harmful when the expectations that are being set are warped by influencers trying to avoid outside harassment and prioritize staying relevant. Their expression of their body image, gender, and racial identity are molded to appease audiences opposed to convey the raw truth.  Defining concepts of “gender double-blind” or “authenticity bind,” these articles distinguish the immense pressure from society and individuals to balance not being too real and not real enough. Their idea defines weighing vulnerability and visibility to d

               As we’ve discussed before, our class’s content has matched up perfectly throughout the course of the semester with occurrences in the world of popular culture—from Beyoncé’s release of Cowboy Carter to Jennifer Lopez’s iconic interview revealing her go-to bodega order (if you know, you know). For this final week, I find it fitting that we are talking about influencers, sandwiched in between Coachella Weekend 1 and Coachella Weekend 2. Not only is Coachella the biggest music festival in the US, but it is also a feeding grounds for companies to advertise their products through sponsoring influencer’s trips to the festival. Most influencers like Madeleine White and Alix Earle attend Coachella as brand ambassadors, acting as the face of a specific companies. This year, Madeleine represented American Express (an ironic pairing given her British upbringing) and Alix represented the soda brand Poppi. This equation represents a win-win for both parties involved, as brands rec

          Selena was a worldwide phenomenon and an icon to the latino community. She opened doors and created a sense of reality, she made the American dream attainable. Aparicio in “Rethinking Latinidad in Media and Popular Culture” highlights the insane impact Selena's death had on not just the latino community but America as well. As Aparicio shares his experience when watching Selena for the first time it brought back memories of the first time I saw Selena . Watching this movie very young was life-changing, everyone knew who Selena was and seeing her story be portrayed in Hollywood was big.  Aparicio emphasizes the importance of duality, sexuality and the good daughter look. He claims that the coexistence of both ignites a “patriarchal discourse that, through processes of racialization and erotization, objectify Latinas’ bodies (pg 98). I can definitely agree with this quote, growing up in a latino community young girls’s bodies were sexualized at an early age to determine

For ages, Hollywood has treated audiences like 5-year-old kids. But I will not fight that today, as in the GPT era, one of the most common questions was, "Can you explain this to me as a 5-year-old kid?" These dynamics can be seen in other aspects of our film industry, and as a foreign and Hispanic, something that I noticed from Hollwyood is their impossibility to bet on more than one Latino or Asian talent simultaneously. Things are changing, but it has been almost 30 years since "Selena" premiered in theaters, 32 since the real Selena was killed, and 80 years since Carmen Miranda wore the Tutti Frutti hat.  Part of this lack of focus on more than one Latina talent responds to diverse issues within Hollywood: the lack of complex Latino and Latinx characters, their sexualization and objectification, and their bankability. It is easy to answer the last two issues: if you have one "hot Latina," it will be a commercial value connecting with some audiences wit

      I work as a student ambassador in the Admission Center at USC, and my most popular question from guests has always been "have you seen famous people at USC" or "do you know ___" especially now that USC has gained attention in the sphere of athletics. Since USC has had multiple big-name athletes join our athletic programs for this academic school year, I feel strongly that there has been an emergence of stars in collegiate athletics in a similar way to what we've seen in films and music throughout this course. To answer the original question -- the only "campus celebrity" I've ever run into was Juju Watkins (in Dulce) but I would argue that Juju Watkins is one of -- if not the best -- example of what I mean when I say athletes have been connected to the star image. Specifically in the context of gender representation in athletics, the USC Women's Basketball team has proven with their success in March Madness as well as with their first Pac

     I wanted to respond and build on some of the ideas presented in Diana's supplemental post about One Direction, specifically with how the boy band and subsequent death of the genre was essentially perfected by One Direction. The Boy Band as a concept is all about construction and presentation, the most hyper curated pop music perfectly crafted by a record label to sell records and stadiums. There's an interesting relationship between the acting careers of members of boy bands and their role as popular artists. I think in our conversation about Beyonce, Taylor and Madonna, each of the respective "big three" still maintain a certain level of risk for a record label, where a boy band is a perfectly curated money making machine that often remain as controlled and controversy free as humanly possible. The boy band is effectively big corporate music's way of insuring massive success, which makes failed projects all the more interesting. King of the Hill has a great

In Beltran’s piece, I was most drawn to two things: the physical construction of the body and ownership of the body. As we see with so many stars and celebrities over time, and with non-stars and their cosmetic surgeries, those types of body modification are not only accepted without question, but often glorified. When a star gets a new BBL or an adjustment to their nose, the response is often positive; it’s their body, and they can modify it how they want (as long as it’s aesthetically pleasing). Is the construction of the body for the public image inherently bad? Is it expected to stay relevant in changing cultures and trends? What level of ownership does the person outside of star image have of their own body – is that agency? Beltran uses the phrase “embody” to show how Lopez’s image might’ve convinced viewers of her ability to play the role in Selena . Is body so important to acting, that without a certain body an image is unbelievable? I can’t imagine believing Christian Bale