share.63 These moments let us know “we are the same, we are normal. These people are not.” In these moments, we reaffirm our own values and beliefs, often in rejection of those that celebrity culture deems ideal.64
Gossip that is critical, or that rejects the codes of the celebrity universe, may be seen as an expression of what Alison Jaggar calls outlaw emotions. Jaggar argues that subordinated individuals may pay a higher price for disagreeing with the status quo and therefore become frustrated, fearful, or even angry when faced with so-called norms. Rejections of socially sanctioned identities and behaviors, in this theory, may serve as a mode of resistance.65 Young women, for instance, who have been told that they have to be supergirls in order to “have it all,” may take pleasure in scoffing at the impossible, paradoxical standards that make it compulsory to be white and heterosexual, standards that remain dominant across much of celebrity media. Gossip that seems catty may actually be a rational response to the claim that, for women, independence and success are possible, but totally tenuous, at risk of being ripped away at any moment due to some minor perceived inadequacy or failure to measure up.66 Talking back may be a way of rejecting conformity to the standard conventions of successful femininity. Expressing these types of outlaw emotions, especially in concert with other like-minded people, can be deeply satisfying.
It is a kind of pleasurable subversion. We enjoy the opportunity to engage in a form of confident self-expression about famous, rich, and often powerful others. We flex the public’s ideological muscles, as if to say, “You may be wealthy, gorgeous, and all the rest, but we still get the final say.” While these moments can be mean-spirited, they are more centrally about our ability to affirm social norms in concert with other like-minded people. We judge celebrities not only to make ourselves feel better about our own place in the social landscape but also as a means of picking and choosing which values we adhere to and which we reject.
Because celebrities’ lives are publicly enacted, through what Hermes calls the “repertoire of melodrama,” which rests on sentimental and sensational language and narratives, their miseries, dramas, and feuds also become our own. We use celebrity life as a way of considering our own experiences, and stories about the private lives of the rich and famous reaffirm a sense of basic human equality.67 But as we also wallow in the misery of the privileged few, we may feel somehow righteous; we can imagine a cosmic (if not a political or structural) justice being exacted. We learn the price paid for daring to rise above others (the shame) or for squandering fame through ego or excess or overindulgence. These narratives remind us that even wealth and success do not free us from sorrow, and such tales of stars’ suffering can impart a sense that in the end we’re all equal with our crosses to bear, despite disparities in wealth and fame. Grief is democratized. Joys and sorrows are common.
Obviously many of us do not read celebrity gossip “straight,” taking it at face value. We know that celebrity gossip is trashy, and to appear sucked in by it makes us look like gullible dupes of the media, so by indulging in it while, at the same time, distancing ourselves from it, we can assume an ironic stance toward it, laugh at it, and make it clear that we know how bad it is. We can even boast of reading the Enquirer or clicking through TMZ as a way of being campy and immersing ourselves in low taste. Celebrity texts now anticipate our critical gaze, presenting content with a wink and a sly nod to our own skepticism so that even the most jaded can enjoy. That way we can enact (through enunciative productivity) that we are inoculated against it.
The Psychology of Fandom
A number of theories have emerged to explain the psychology of fandom and our relationships to celebrities. Today, we take for granted that the media and the celebrity culture it sustains have created new forms of publicness, through which we might have intimate relationships with people we have never met. As Richard Schickel wrote in Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity, one of the first, key books written about the cultural study of fame, thanks to media technologies we are brought ever “closer” to the famous, allowing us to enjoy an illusion of intimacy with them. “To a greater or lesser degree,” we have internalized celebrities, “unconsciously made them a part of our consciousness, just as if they were, in fact, friends.”68 He continued that celebrities take up “permanent residence” in our inner lives as well, becoming central to our “reveries and fantasies, guides to action, to sexuality, to ambition.” Now, indeed, celebrity culture can be “permanently insinuated” into our sensibilities, as many of us carry them, their traits, and our relationships with them around as part of our “mental luggage.”69
Media representations, including those of celebrities, can foster in us a sense that we actually know and may understand famous figures as though they were a part of our everyday lives, like friends or family members. When we experience these feelings toward a media figure, this is called a “parasocial relationship.” Such relationships, in turn, produce “parasocial interactions” (PSI), which occur when audience members respond to media figures as if we were with them in a face-to-face social relationship, talking to or feeling empathy for that individual as though he or she were a personal acquaintance.70 Examples include when we might yell at a newscaster, or someone featured in a news story on TV, as if they could hear us, or when we know a character is about to walk into a dangerous situation and yell “Don’t do it!”
Initially, as with early thoughts about fandom, some scholars saw parasocial relationships as a form of mental lack, a compensation for loneliness or deficiencies in one’s social life. As David Giles has noted, “The implication that PSI is ‘imaginary,’ or ‘pseudo-social,’ pathologizes viewers who form strong parasocial attachments.”71 Other work has disputed these claims, and examined the affective functions of this phenomenon. For example, our one-sided interactions with media figures (real or fictional) allow us to use and assess their behaviors and attitudes as ways of understanding and measuring our own lives, and this may be especially true for adolescents as they seek to use celebrities as role models for their own identity formation. In these ways, PSI can be seen as “an extension of normal social cognition.”72 Research has shown that PSI can be especially robust if our attraction to the media figure is strong and the program or film in question is especially realistic. Indeed, perceived similarity between the media figure and the audience member, otherwise known as identification, can be a very important factor in the strength of the parasocial relationship. Physical similarities, taste in dress, or shared hobbies and passions can make audiences feel that famous figures really are “like us.” And for parasocial relationships to be sustained, we need to believe that the celebrity is not so very different from people in our own social circles.73
Giles sought to identify different types of relationships we might form with famous unknown others, which can help us understand why we might connect to some celebrities and not others, and to connect with them in different ways. First there is identification, when we recognize some characteristics in the media figure that we feel we share. Yet while we might identify with a star, we may or may not engage in PSI with him or her. There is also wishful identification, where we desire to emulate the figure with whom we identify, and affinity, where we like the media figure without necessarily identifying with him or her.
But the kind of media figure the celebrity is, and how we are addressed, can shape our levels of parasocial interaction. Direct address to us—by talk show hosts, comedians, newscasters—can especially evoke strong PSI. The mode of address in celebrity gossip magazines is also intimate and direct: the magazine is your best friend with the latest insider, confidential info, talking to you, with headlines like “The Joan Rivers You Didn’t Know” seeking to lure us in. Unlike the New York Times, which would not have headlines like “What Was Andrew Wiener Thinking? His Secrets Inside!,” the questioning titles seek to engage you and immediately turn you from a passive recipient of information into an active adjudicator of the moral issues involved. And with each question, betrayal, triumph, or crisis, a judgment is required; it is a given that you are an authority on such matters and will bring your own social knowledge and moral compass to bear on the topic at hand. You are hailed as having every right to evaluate these rich and famous people, and to speculate about their futures.74
Jackie
