Transnational Celebrity Activism in Global Politics

Description

In recent years, celebrities from George Clooney to Bono to Angelina Jolie have attempted to play an increasingly important role in global politics. Celebrity activism is an ever-growing, internationally visible phenomenon—yet the impact of these high-profile humanitarians on public awareness, government support, and mobilization of resources remains under-researched. Bringing together a diverse group of contributors from media studies and public diplomacy, Transnational Celebrity Activism in Global Politics aims to fill that void with a new interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of celebrity activism in international relations.

Introduction: The Challenge of Transnational Celebrity Activism: Background, Aim and Scope of the Book – Liza Tsaliki, Christos Frangonikolopoulos and Asteris Huliaras

 

PART I: TRANSNATIONAL CELEBRITY ACTIVISM, DIPLOMACY AND GLOBAL POLITICS

 

Chapter 1: Bringing the Individuals Back in? Celebrities as Transnational Activists – Asteris Huliaras and Nikolaos Tzifakis

 

Chapter 2: Celebrity Politics and Cultural Citizenship: UN Goodwill Ambassadors and Messengers of Peace – Mark Wheeler

 

Chapter 3: The Cosmopolitan-Communitarian Divide and Celebrity Anti-war Activism – Annika Bergman Rosamond

 

PART II: TRANSNATIONAL CELEBRITY ACTIVISM AND CONFLICT

 

Chapter 4: ‘Creating a Groundswell or Getting on the Bandwagon? Celebrities, the Media and Distant Conflict’ – Virgil Hawkins

 

Chapter 5: Can Celebrity Save Diplomacy? Appropriating Wisdom through ‘The Elders’ – Henk Huijser and Jinna Tay

 

Chapter 6: Fighting Superior Military Power in Chiapas, Mexico: Celebrity Activism and its Limitations – Roy Krøvel

 

Chapter 7: ‘Hollywood Goes to the Eastern Mediterranean: Spiro S. Skouras and ‘Unorthodox Power’, 1940s and 1950s – Evanthis Hatzivassiliou and Georgios Kazamias

 

PART III: CELEBRITY ACTIVISM, GLOBAL HUMANITARIANISM AND THE GLOBAL SOUTH

 

Chapter 8: Consuming Ethics: Conflict Diamonds, the Entertainment Industry and Celebrity Activism  – Sue Tait

 

Chapter 9: The Global Politics of Celebrity Humanitarianism – Riina Yrjölä

 

Chapter 10: Madonna’s Adoptions: Celebrity Activism, Justice and Civil Society in the Global South – Graham Finlay

 

PART IV: TRANSNATIONAL CELEBRITY ACTIVISM, ‘CELEBRITYHOOD’ AND MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS

 

Chapter 11: Linking Small Arms, Child Soldiers, NGOs and Celebrity Activism: Nicolas Cage and the Lord Of War – Michael Stohl, Cynthia Stohl and Rachel Stohl

 

Chapter 12: Calling a New Tune for Africa? Analysing a Celebrity-led Campaign to Redefine the Debate on Africa – Dorothy Njoroge

 

Chapter 13: Fame and Symbolic Value in Celebrity Activism and Diplomacy – George Pleios

 

Chapter 14: Celebrity Culture and Postcolonial Relations within the Portuguese Media Landscape: The Case of Catarina Furtado – Ana Jorge

 

Chapter 15: Big Dog Celebrity Activists: Barking up the Wrong Tree – Varihi Scott

 

Conclusion: Making Sense of Transnational Celebrity Activism: Causes, Methods and Consequences – Liza Tsaliki, Christos Frangonikolopoulos and Asteris Huliaras

Sujets

• Cultural Policy
• Public Policy
• Media Studies
• Social Science
• Popular Culture
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Sociologie, société et politique
• History of art
• General officer
• Politics
• History of film
• General
• Cultural Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 27 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841505268
• Langue: English

Extrait

Transnational Celebrity Activism in Global Politics
Transnational Celebrity Activism in Global Politics
Changing the World?
Edited by Liza Tsaliki, Christos A. Frangonikolopoulos and Asteris Huliaras
First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose Copy-editor: Integra Software Services Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-349-3
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
Introduction: The Challenge of Transnational Celebrity Activism: Background, Aim and Scope of the Book
Liza Tsaliki, Christos Frangonikolopoulos and Asteris Huliaras
Part I Transnational Celebrity Activism, Diplomacy and Global Politics
Chapter 1: Bringing the Individuals Back in? Celebrities as Transnational Activists
Asteris Huliaras and Nikolaos Tzifakis
Chapter 2: Celebrity Politics and Cultural Citizenship: UN Goodwill Ambassadors and Messengers of Peace
Mark Wheeler
Chapter 3: The Cosmopolitan-Communitarian Divide and Celebrity Anti-war Activism
Annika Bergman Rosamond
Part II Transnational Celebrity Activism and Conflict
Chapter 4: Creating a Groundswell or Getting on the Bandwagon? Celebrities, the Media and Distant Conflict
Virgil Hawkins
Chapter 5: Can Celebrity Save Diplomacy? Appropriating Wisdom through The Elders
Henk Huijser and Jinna Tay
Chapter 6: Fighting Superior Military Power in Chiapas, Mexico: Celebrity Activism and its Limitations
Roy Kr vel
Chapter 7: Hollywood Goes to the Eastern Mediterranean: Spiro S. Skouras and Unorthodox Power , 1940s and 1950s
Evanthis Hatzivassiliou and Georgios Kazamias
Part III Celebrity Activism, Global Humanitarianism and the Global South
Chapter 8: Consuming Ethics: Conflict Diamonds, the Entertainment Industry and Celebrity Activism
Sue Tait
Chapter 9: The Global Politics of Celebrity Humanitarianism
Riina Yrj l
Chapter 10: Madonna s Adoptions: Celebrity Activism, Justice and Civil Society in the Global South
Graham Finlay
Part IV Transnational Celebrity Activism, Celebrityhood and Media Representations
Chapter 11: Linking Small Arms, Child Soldiers, NGOs and Celebrity Activism: Nicolas Cage and the Lord Of War
Michael Stohl, Cynthia Stohl and Rachel Stohl
Chapter 12: Calling a New Tune for Africa? Analysing a Celebrity-led Campaign to Redefine the Debate on Africa
Dorothy Njoroge
Chapter 13: Fame and Symbolic Value in Celebrity Activism and Diplomacy
George Pleios
Chapter 14: Celebrity Culture and Postcolonial Relations within the Portuguese Media Landscape: The Case of Catarina Furtado
Ana Jorge
Chapter 15: Big Dog Celebrity Activists: Barking up the Wrong Tree
Varihi Scott
Conclusion: Making Sense of Transnational Celebrity Activism: Causes, Methods and Consequences
Liza Tsaliki, Christos Frangonikolopoulos and Asteris Huliaras
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
The Challenge of Transnational Celebrity Activism: Background, Aim and Scope of the Book
Liza Tsaliki, Christos Frangonikolopoulos and Asteris Huliaras

T he development of a new cultural vocabulary, wherein celebrityhood holds a preeminent position, indicates the pervasiveness of celebrity culture in our everyday lives and popular culture. Celebrities, pretty much like stars, can be seen as persons who, in the eyes of other members of the society, are especially remarkable and attract universal attention despite the fact that they usually hold limited or non-existent institutional power; in fact, as we shall argue in this volume, we have entered a new era where celebrities increasingly occupy institutional positions of power - in this case through activist, diplomatic and charity initiatives.
In this context then, and taking a cue from Alberoni (2007), perhaps in present day society, which is marked by a high level of interdependence, celebrities can provide a common point of reference for all without the institutional barriers that would separate, for example, the king or nobles from their lay public. Celebrities attract unconditional admiration and interest and are usually credited with capacities superior to those of other people, as a result of which they are invested with a Weberian (1968: 241) charisma. It is this notion of charisma, in conjunction with a number of converging factors, such as the recent rise of philanthrocapitalism, a climate of political correctness, a strong civil society among many western states where volunteering is firmly grounded, as well as the West s collective guilt over its accumulated wealth compared to Third World suffering, which make celebrities amenable to becoming advocates of activist causes on human poverty.
The economy of celebrity culture, says Graham Turner (2004), dictates that celebrities develop a strategy for building and maintaining consumer (i.e. audience) loyalty by forging and safeguarding a symbiotic relationship with the media; taking this further, we suggest that celebrity activism and charity may be interpreted as part and parcel of this symbiosis, whereby the celebrity persona is this all-round individual who, apart from feeding publicity events to the media upon mundane matters such as their latest show, film, album, romance, vacation and the like, also takes active interest in heavy artillery matters such as Third World debt, world famine, child soldiers or the vaccination of children in Africa. Then, when the publicity frenzy focuses on the individual celebrity, the good cause gets maximum media coverage and exposure as well.
Perhaps, this is one way for the celebrity industry to develop a facet of social corporate responsibility - when it capitalizes heavily on the likes of the Brangelina couple (active in Congo, Ethiopia and Sudan among other countries), Coldplay s Chris Martin (in Ghana where the singer works on fair trade on behalf of Oxfam), Jay-Z (in Nigeria, where the rap idol and spouse of Beyonce is also renowned for supporting a United Nations project for drinkable water), actress Natalie Portman (in Uganda, following a documentary on gorillas in Rwanda, where she supports FINCA, a charity providing funding to remote communities around the globe), football legend Pele (in Egypt, where he supports the Littlest Lamb charity, which has recently set up an orphanage), and many others, including Prince Harry, His Highness Albert of Monaco and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, to put the message across continents. As a result, drawing from a previous era when film stars operated as a means to promote consumer capitalism (Turner 2004) - a process initiated in the 1930s and 1940s and continued to this date - celebrity activism can be seen, we suggest, as a way to negotiate the promotion of philanthrocapitalism and environmentalism across the globe.
Although a system for celebrity creation has been in place firmly since the birth of mass commercial culture, public visibility of celebrities has grown considerably as a result of new mechanisms for garnering attention - i.e. SNSs, microblogging. 1 Changes in the organization of publicity and in technology have had a profound impact on the operation of celebrity, already since the mid-nineteenth century, where celebrity was established as a mass phenomenon through newspapers and the telegraph; whereas in the first half of the twentieth century, the myth that fame was a natural cream-rising-to the-top phenomenon largely reigned, around 1950, changes in the celebrity-building system (i.e. breakdown of studio control, rise of television, a boom in the supply of celebrities) destabilized the prevailing celebrity discourse and the publicity enterprise invited audiences as insiders to the publicity game itself (Gamson 1992/2007: 142).
Although today the relationship between audience-celebrity is close and clearly articulated compared to earlier times (which means that audiences of today are aware of the manufactured nature of the celebrity images they consume and of the publicity machine that engulfs these images as opposed to the less media-savvy audiences of the early celebrity texts during the first half of the twentieth century), we argue that the extent to which audiences are suspicious of celebrities interior motives (i.e. quest for self-exposure, capitalization of a noble cause for self promotion etc.) when it comes to embracing altruistic objectives is debatable, and it is to this end that targeted qualitative audience research is needed.
Taking Gamson s argument further (1992/2007), we also argue that we should, perhaps, read the emerging narrative of celebrity activism as an attempt at establishing a greater sense of connection and intimacy between the famous and their admirers, pretty much as was the case in the 1930s and 1940s when celebrity publicity was presented as containing a blown-up version of the typical (i.e. normal , mainstream) way of life (1992/2007: 146). By viewing celebrities as part of the same civil society who, like the rest of us, do charitable work and raise awareness on sensitive and noble human causes, we essentially perceive them as ordinary folks, thus collapsing the distance between us and them. In fact, the development of celebrity activism may be the latest manifestation of the revised relationship between fame and achievement, 2 whereby celebrities need to perform achievements (through activism and charity) in order to retain fame. In this context, the celebrity in the public interest narrative justifies the opulence and extravagance the lives of ce