Analysing celebrity politics from Obama to Trump

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 504-507
Author(s):  
Annelot Prins
Keyword(s):  
2018 ◽  
pp. 129-157
Author(s):  
Robert van Krieken
Keyword(s):  

Politics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-153
Author(s):  
David S Moon

This article draws out the significant similarities between the political insurgencies of Jesse Ventura in 1999 and Donald Trump in 2016, charting their own premillennial political collaborations as members of the Reform Party, before identifying wider lessons for studies of contemporary celebrity politicians through a comparison of their individual campaigns. Its analysis is based upon the concept of the ‘politainer’, introduced by Conley and Schultz, into which it incorporates Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of the carnival fool. The heterodox nature of both Ventura and Trump’s political campaign styles, it argues, is in part explained by the nature of the cultural spheres within which their public personas were produced; specifically, the fact that these personas, which they carried over from the entertainment to political spheres, were produced within genres of popular culture generally positioned as having ‘low’ cultural value. This, it argues, furnished both with an anti-establishment ethos as ‘no bullshit’ straight-talkers, marking them as outsider candidates able to act as conduits for political protest by an electorate alienated from mainstream political elites. It concludes by emphasising the potential importance that political celebrities’ specific cultural production can play in shaping a subsequent political campaign in general.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-259
Author(s):  
Sophie Quirk
Keyword(s):  

SAGE Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402094186
Author(s):  
Zhongxuan Lin ◽  
Yupei Zhao

This article investigates the crucial political dimension of celebrity. Specifically, it examines celebrities’ great potential for governmentality in the Chinese context by tracing the history of celebrities in Confucian, Maoist, and post-Maoist governmentalities. It concludes that this type of governmentality, namely, celebrity as governmentality, displays uniquely Chinese characteristics in that it is a set of knowledge, discourses, and techniques used primarily by those who govern. It also highlights the central role of the state as the concrete terrain for the application of this mode of governmentality throughout Chinese history. Finally, it notes the always evolving nature of governmentality, as observed in the phenomena of governing from afar and resistance from below. These findings help us rethink the contingent and diversified nature of the phenomena of celebrity and governmentality and challenge Western norms and political theories that covertly employ them.


Media Asia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nolan ◽  
Stephanie Brookes

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haozhou Pu ◽  
Joshua I. Newman ◽  
Michael D. Giardina

In this article, we examine the local–global celebrity politics of former Chinese professional tennis player Li Na. We locate Li Na as representative of a growing class of Chinese celebrities who display both extraordinary popularity and enormous marketability. At the same time, Li Na’s noted “rebelliousness”—most especially her “fiery” personality and overt public repudiation of the Chinese communist state—has made her a deeply politicized if not polarizing figure. In this study, we position Li Na as a symbolic body characterized by professionalism, individualism, and commercialism within Chinese media. Further, we investigate the representation, mediation, and consumption of her unique celebrity identity and the cultural politics of the danfei (the “fly solo”) policy in resonance to the decentralization of state power in China. We conclude by suggesting that Li Na’s rebelliousness symbolizes the core values of a growing consensus for neoliberalism in China; that is, it is her rejection of being Chinese (state) that reestablishes herself as Chinese (autonomous), which signifies fundamental social transitions in China intertwined with the embracement of the global economy and a reimagination of the nation.


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