The Sociology of
Celebrity
Popular Culture
Fall 2012
Robert Wonser
What are Celebrities?
Celebrity is the site of a surplus of
contemporary society’s charisma—by its
very nature it involves individuals with
special qualities
 Mills: celebrity is the “American form of
public honor”

Celebrity and its Public

Scant social science attention except as
“celebrity as pathology”
 Celebrities
aren’t necessarily more talented, skilled,
intelligent etc., just better packaged, promoted and
thrust upon hungry gullible masses
 Celebrity is dangerous and fans and the rest of society
is damaged by their contact with it
 Celebrities are narcissists
 Fans’ “celebrity worship” linked with negative traits:
dependency, “game-playing” in romantic relationships,
shyness, loneliness, authoritarianism
Celebrity as Commodity



In line with critical theory approach; (Horkheimer
and Adorno), when citizens give themselves up
to the easy pleasures of capitalism (like mass
media, consumerism, celebrity) they are more
readily controlled by tyrants.
Fans and consumers havce been duped by
capitalism into fancying something worthless
and unhealthy
Pacify and squelch dissent inducing somatic
complacency
Celebrity as Commodity
Celebrity as replacement god
 Opiate of the masses
 Carrier of ideology

Consumption of Celebrities



We consume them; celebrities both sell and are
sold
What happens to celebrities (their
commodification) is just more explicit of what
capitalism does to all of us; turns us into things to
be bought and sold
Celebrities embody 2 dominant Western
ideologies: individualism and market capitalism
 They
serve as signs through which these ideologies
get passed onto the population
Celebrity: Interactional Approach


Microstructuralism approach: Cultural norms
are built into the context of each interactional
situation and the actors’ behavior either
conforms to or deviates from these norms.
“negotiated order” perspective: norms are not
necessarily fixed but are often negotiated
interactionally as situations emerge and develop
Regular Guy Pretends to be a
Celebrity in Times Square
Fans and Celebrity
“illusion of intimacy”
 One-sided; imbalance of power
 Asymmetrical
 What about Twitter and FB?
 Celebrities as “intimate strangers”

 Celebrities
= strangers
 Friends, family, colleagues = intimates
The Moral Order of Celebrity
Sightings


Celebrity sighting provide
insight into the everyday rules
of interaction that govern
mundane encounters
Status differentials when
normal people rub elbows with
the famous  Presence of a
celebrity represents a
“situational impropriety”
something is out of place in a
situation (Goffman 1963)
“We’re not worthy!
We’re not worthy!”
The Moral Order of Celebrity
Sightings




Etiquette of these encounters based on “civil
inattention” which involves looking at someone and then
quickly looking away as you approach them on the street,
but not giving them any further attention or
acknowledging them in any way
When we approach someone we know we engage in
“Deference rituals” in which the approached person’s
status is acknowledged overtly through the greetings and
gestures of the approaching person (1967:72)
Rituals serve to preserve the status of those deferred to,
and their violation threatens it
So… which interaction rules should be used?
Moral Orders

Moral order is a shared set of values and norms,
prescriptions and proscriptions, punishments and
rewards that create and maintain social
cohesion, community and solidarity.
 Functions
of the moral order: facilitates social
cohesion, provides a form of social control, offers a set
of rules of behavior for which persons are held
accountable, and furnishes guidelines for managing
conflicts when they arise

Are celebrities intimates or strangers? Does how
we proceed depend on the answer to this
question?
Interpretive work of Celebrity
Encounters


Two types:
Recognition work:
 When
seers struggle to define and comprehend the
presence of a celebrity in their ordinary world

Response work:
 When
seers present themselves to the celebrity,
engineering the encounter to create a particular
definition of the situation
Interpretive Work: Recognition work

Recognition work – recognition of a celebrity is not
automatic and the process of recognition is problematic
specifically because the presence of the extraordinary
challenges routine assumptions about ordinary
experience



Double take – recognition may begin with a sense of familiarity
(somehow recognizable)
Great expectations – celebrities don’t always look the way we
expect them to look (eg: shorter in person)
Proof positive – after recognition is made we seek some
evidence to authenticate that who we are seeing is really who we
think it is (eg: that knowing smirk…)
Interpretive Work: Response work

Response work - attending to the presentation of our
ordinary self in the presence of the extra ordinary star

Staying cool – can take the form of playing it cool… (easiest course
of action to take)



Preserving the celebrity's privacy is part of the moral order, but so is
avoiding your own embarrassment by sticking to the situational rules
Your biggest fan – the recognition of a celebrity and the gushing
over them exposes you and the celebrity to potential
embarrassment, so mitigate it with accounts of excuses (“biggest
fan, I had to!”)
Two thumbs down – when celebrities encounter non-celebrities in
public, they themselves are expected to do their part in upholding
the moral order of the situation


What do we expect of celebrities in public?
Too flashy? Boo…
Conclusion



“minor ceremonies” (Goffman 1967:91) of
celebrity sightings underscore and reproduce the
contemporary secular moral orders of status,
fame and reputation in everyday life.
Special kind of encounter with its own rules for
interaction
Emergent rules of celebrity sightings uphold and
police various boundaries: ordinary versus
extraordinary, obscurity versus fame, stranger
versus intimate.