Extraordinarily Ordinary

Us Weekly and the Rise of Reality Television Celebrity

Erin A. Meyers

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780813599441
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Extraordinarily Ordinary offers a critical analysis of the production of a distinct form of twenty-first century celebrity constructed through the exploding coverage of reality television cast members in Us Weekly magazine. Erin A. Meyers connects the economic and industrial forces that helped propel Us Weekly to the top of the celebrity gossip market in the early 2000s with the ways in which reality television cast members fit neatly into the social and cultural norms that shaped the successful gossip formulas of the magazine. Us Weekly 's construction of the "extraordinarily ordinary" celebrity within its gossip narratives is a significant symptom of the broader intensification of discourses of ordinariness and the private in the production of contemporary celebrity, in which fame is paradoxically grounded in "just being yourself" while simultaneously defining what the "right" sort of self is in contemporary culture.

CHAPTER 1

THE ORDINARY AND THE EXTRAORDINARY

UNPACKING THE CELEBRITY IMAGE

Appeals to ordinariness are a central ingredient in the alchemy of stardom, and entertainment news media and celebrity gossip weeklies—like Us Weekly—have long played a central role in the construction and circulation of this facet of the star image. Popular magazines, as Joshua Gamson (1992) argues, offer “implicit and explicit explanations … of why and how people become famous” (p. 2). As extratextual media sources outside of the space of public performance of talent or skill, this “why and how” is focused primarily on “the constant textual exposure of the ‘real lives’ of celebrities—in their most believable, ‘ordinary’ form” (p. 7). A key goal of this book is to understand how Us Weekly engaged this appeal to ordinariness in the early twenty-first century around the reality television cast member in ways that helped it shift the locus of fame toward the private and ordinary and, as a result, open space for the rise of the extraordinarily ordinary celebrity. This chapter unpacks the interplay between the ordinary and extraordinary in traditional analyses of celebrity to establish the particular parameters of the extraordinarily ordinary as a distinct form of celebrity. As will be made clear, my use of the term extraordinarily ordinary throughout this book centers on those stars whose fame originated from the performance of ordinariness on reality television programs in the early twenty-first century, even if their current status now eclipses those origins. The construction and circulation of the reality cast member as an extraordinarily ordinary celebrity in Us Weekly intensifies and extends these ordinary origins through appeals to feminized forms of celebrity labor. By unpacking these forms of labor and the ways in which they are used in Us Weekly’s coverage of reality television cast members, this book situates the extraordinarily ordinary celebrity as a significant symptom of the broader intensification of ordinariness and the private in the production of contemporary celebrity.

CELEBRITY AND LABOR

Emerging out of cinema studies and focused primarily on film stardom, Richard Dyer’s (1986) theories of stardom provide a vital starting point for the consideration of contemporary celebrity and the conditions and forms of celebrity labor that produce celebrity images. His canonical work originates the premise that the star image is built on the juxtaposition of the public performing self and the private or “real” person behind that image. This intertextual image rests on an inherent tension between these public and private selves, balancing the extraordinary self—marked by the display of talent in public performances and the stage-managed glamour of celebrity lifestyles—with the ordinary and real self or the “irreducible core of being” that “remain[s] constant and give[s] sense to the person’s actions and reactions” (p. 8). A star is not simply an image on a screen but is also a flesh-and-blood individual who exists in the real world. Though one side may come to dominate the image over the course of an individual’s career, Dyer’s view stakes a claim for the necessity of both the public-based performance and the revelation of the private self to the concept of the star and argues both of these selves are the result of labor on the part of the star (and her range of handlers). He contends that “stars are involved in making themselves into commodities; they are both labor and the thing that labor produces” (p. 5). In this view, stars are constructed or produced; they perform their images on-screen and in extratextual media, foregrounding narratives of labor and work in understanding the star image. The public performance is the more obvious, visible, and valued form of labor, with the labor of the private side remaining hidden to reinforce the authenticity or realness of the person behind the glamorous star facade and support her deserved fame. Thus, the public performance of talent or skill has long been understood as a, if not the, crucial component to most traditional conceptions of stardom.

However, Dyer’s emphasis on intertextuality suggests, the mass media and in particular extratextual coverage of the private side of the star remain crucial to the star’s social and economic power. Similarly, Robert Van Krieken (2012) points out that celebrity power is not simply a matter of talent but is tied more generally to the use of mass media as a means to attract attention. He claims that “layered on top of whatever talents, skills and moral virtues they may have—which is what constitutes their identity as a super-human football player, an incredibly beautiful and moving actress, or an aspiring singer—is their social function as larger or smaller bundles of attention capital, and this is what constitutes them as a celebrity” (p. 61). While the work of displaying one’s talent has an obvious venue in films, pop songs, or athletic competitions, the celebrity also needs a place in which to circulate the private side of the image or to do the work of counterbalancing the extraordinary performing self with appeals to the ordinary and authentic private side. Van Krieken argues that early mass media technologies, particularly photography, that enabled the cheap and widespread distribution of images helped to incorporate celebrities into everyday life as their real, rather than their performing, selves. Photographic images of celebrities, from the early carte-de-visites of the mid-nineteenth century to the paparazzi snaps that currently populate gossip media, brought celebrities closer to audiences by giving the public the ability to “see what a celebrity really looked like” (p. 41, emphasis in original). As a result, a wide array of extratextual mass media forms, including entertainment news media and gossip magazines, emerged as the vehicle through which the celebrity does the work of performing her real self as a means to shore up the attention to the public image. This performance of the private and ordinary self outside of the public performance thus became a necessary means to generate and regenerate the attention capital that supports the social and economic power of celebrities. Unlike the more obvious work of “doing something” to enter the public eye, however, this work of “just being yourself” in these extratextual sources is hidden beneath claims of authenticity and ordinariness, at once humanizing the celebrities and intensifying their roles as markers of identity within contemporary culture.

To understand the reality television celebrity’s intervention into this traditional view of celebrity, this book expands on these underlying notions of labor that shape the production and circulation of celebrity images. I begin by expanding the prevailing discussion of celebrity labor by delineating three distinct yet overlapping forms: creative labor, the labor of ordinariness, and celebrity lifestyle labor. How these forms of labor are specifically deployed in Us Weekly’s coverage of reality television cast members in the early 2000s will be explored in more detail in subsequent chapters, but I here sketch a basic definition of each form. Broadly, I argue that while all these forms of labor are necessary to the production and circulation of any celebrity image, including traditional stars, understanding each as a separate form helps to illuminate the complex parameters of celebrity and, more crucially for this project, to recognize the particular intersections that produce the reality television celebrity as extraordinarily ordinary. The performance of these various forms may contribute to celebrity but in no way guarantees it. As with all forms of celebrity, the extraordinarily ordinary celebrity is hierarchical, with those who more successfully perform certain forms of labor rising to the top and building a lasting fame while others find only short-lived or celetoid-level success. Moreover, expanding the forms of celebrity labor also lays bare the cultural contexts that shape the identities produced through such labor and the ways in which they circulate in culture. The work of just being yourself shapes and is shaped by cultural norms of gender, race, class, and sexuality, with only the “right” kind of self emerging as a top extraordinarily ordinary celebrity. The notions of deserving fame versus being famous for being famous that are at the core of reality television celebrity are wrapped up in gendered notions of the kind of labor performed in the service of stardom. Even as the extraordinarily ordinary celebrity helps intensify the importance of ordinariness to celebrity culture, it is also frequently denigrated as a lesser form of fame because of the dominance of the more hidden and feminized forms of labor associated with performance of the private and ordinary self.

Creative Labor

It has never been the case that talent alone makes a star. The notion of talent itself is, as Dyer (1979/1998) points out, historically and culturally specific and, more importantly, subjective. He says, “Not all highly talented performers become stars, nor are all stars highly talented” (p. 16). But traditional stars claim to do something to merit at least the initial attention of the public. Richard deCordova (1991) calls this “creative labor” and suggests it is the means through which the star’s work on stage or screen is framed as fictional or at least intentionally performative and, therefore, separate from the real individual who does this work (p. 21). For example, while some might question Britney Spears’s claim to talent, she nevertheless entered the realm of celebrity through her performances as a pop singer. Spears retains some claim to traditional celebrity through her continued creative labor as a pop star (e.g., releasing albums and performing publicly). Such claims have arguably been eclipsed by the focus on the trials and tribulations of her private life within extratextual media, refocusing the core of her image on her private self. But this remains consistent with Dyer’s original intertextual formulation of stardom, as the private-side discourses counterbalance and ultimately serve to draw audiences back to the creative labor that initiated her presence within celebrity culture.

In the hierarchy of celebrity, those at the top (the A-list celebrities) are typically closely tied to, if not lauded for, their creative labor, prioritizing this work as the reason for fame. A star like Meryl Streep or Kate Winslet earned and maintains her fame through celebrated acting performances. Christine Geraghty (2000) labels these stars as “performers” whose images are “defined by work and are often associated with the high cultural values of theatrical performance, even when that performance takes place in film or television” (p. 188). Access to these women’s private life does exist in entertainment and, to a lesser extent, gossip media, but the core of the image remains rooted in the “good work” of the public performance. Even those A-listers whose private lives are on greater display in extratextual media, particularly in relation to scandals, can still retain their top position through appeals to creative labor. Consider stars like Elizabeth Taylor or Angelina Jolie, whose personal lives have been fodder for tabloid gossip. Yet, unlike Britney Spears, these performers’ creative work remains more centrally important to the image because the work is framed as good and thus their fame deserved. Spears, dogged throughout her career with claims of lip-syncing and denigrated for her association with the lesser cultural form of pop music, lacks the good creative labor of someone like Taylor or Jolie, whose Oscar-nominated roles and appearances in “quality” cinema shore up the image as a deserved star despite the presence of any private-life scandal. Nevertheless, Spears is not a purely private-side-focused star, as her songs and performances—her creative labor—continue to maintain an important place in her overall image.

In contrast, the reality celebrity would appear to be excluded from this sort of labor, as the rhetoric of reality television suggests these individuals are not performing for the cameras and have no such counterbalance to offer audiences. This is not to suggest the reality television program plays no role in the image of the reality television celebrity. It does provide an initial text in which the public image is constructed and circulated and, as will be clear in the case studies in the chapters that follow, is used as a way to measure the authenticity of the image. But the labor performed in this space is not generally assumed to be the creative labor of public performance and does not work as a space of intertextuality in the same way because it is assumed to be simply another point of access to the private and real self. Thus, in order to make sense of their increased presence in celebrity culture and the impact of these extraordinarily ordinary celebrities on contemporary notions of fame, I want to highlight the importance of two more feminized and thereby less visible forms of work—the labor of ordinariness and celebrity lifestyle labor—and the spaces in which they are performed to the construction of the reality television celebrity image.

The Labor of Ordinariness

In traditional conceptions of stardom, the labor of ordinariness is framed as the opposite of creative labor, separating the display of the (allegedly) natural and authentic self from the conscious construction of the creative performance. It is performed outside of but typically in service to the media text in which creative labor is performed, distancing this work from that more intentionally performative space and allowing the audience to feel a more intimate connection to the extraordinary individual admired on stage or screen. Julie Wilson (2014) claims: “On-screen stars play characters that often embody social types (e.g., the girl next door or the femme fatale), while off screen, in magazines and on popular talk shows, they appear as ‘real’ people who, like their audiences, experience the highs and lows of life, wrestling with issues to do with family, love, and work” (p. 423). While the labor of ordinariness has always been key to the construction of the star as an intertextual image, scholarship has also offered a crucial reexamination of the role of the private to the celebrity image (Gamson, 1994, 2011; Geraghty, 2000; Holmes, 2004a, 2005; Meyers, 2013; Redmond, 2014; Turner, 2004, 2010). Broadly, these scholars argue the increased public attention to the private and ordinary self reconfigures Dyer’s original notions of stardom toward the more contemporary category of celebrity by essentially eliminating not only “the distinction between deserving and underserving people” but also the need to engage in creative labor to earn fame (Gamson, 1994, p. 10). Such a shift opens the category of celebrity to the ordinary individual by tying fame to attention capital, by whatever means, over talent.

Graeme Turner (2004) contends the “precise moment a public figure becomes a celebrity” can be traced to the moment when reporting about the public figure is eclipsed by a focus on his or her private life (p. 8). While the creative labor is more obvious or visible in the construction of the image, the private self on offer in celebrity magazines is no less a construction or result of labor on the part of the celebrity and her handlers. However, these sources work to obscure the existence of this as labor to preserve the appeal to the authentic and real image offered to audiences. A magazine interview with a celebrity, for example, shows the star at home or speaking “off the cuff” about her family or daily life but is often the result of a carefully negotiated list of questions and/or controlled answers on the part of the celebrity. A fundamental part of revealing the private self is appearing as if no labor is being performed at all and that the star is just being herself. This promotes what Sue Collins (2008) calls the “intertextual capital” of the celebrity commodity, allowing audiences to stitch together a coherent image drawn from both the extraordinary performing self and the private and ordinary self. To acquire high intertextual capital, traditional celebrities must appear unstaged in their private lives, maintaining the illusion that their work and the attention capital gained from performing that work remain tied to the performing self. Here, the gendered nature of the celebrity hierarchy begins to emerge. True and deserved fame is valorized as a public and masculinized form of consciously produced labor (e.g., the creative labor discussed above) in contrast to the more private, feminized, and often invisible labor of ordinariness. Geraghty (2000) points out that the distinction between “star” and “celebrity” is a feminized one that devalues “celebrities” because of their tie to the feminine. She contends, “Women function effectively as spectacle in the press and on television as well as in the cinema. In addition, the common association in popular culture between women and the private sphere of personal relationships and domesticity fits with the emphasis, in the discourse of celebrity, on the private life and leisure activity of the star” (p. 196). Much of the social critique of celebrity is rooted in a dismissal of the forms of private and ordinary labor of just being oneself that underscore the celebrity on offer in spaces like celebrity gossip media. When these once hidden feminine labors and concerns are made visible as part of the construction of fame, the individual who performs these labors is maligned as a “mere celebrity” and/or assumed to be “famous for doing nothing.”

Concern about the role of private-side discourses is not a new one, as evidenced by Daniel Boorstin’s (1964) oft-quoted lament that “the machinery of information” has shifted our attention from “the person known for some serious achievement” to the “new-fashioned celebrity … whose main characteristic is his well-knowness” (pp. 59–60). While Boorstin’s pessimistic view positions celebrity as a site of false meaning and media manufacture, his point about the increased media attention to celebrities and, more crucially, the specific emphasis of this coverage on the private self exposes an important shift in the role of the extratextual sources to the construction and maintenance of modern fame that anticipates the rise of reality television celebrity. At the same time, his negative view reveals a deeper and abiding patriarchal concern about celebrity culture as a destructive social force that denigrates the work of true greatness or talent by elevating the concerns and labors of the private sphere into the public purview. He says, “Our emphasis on their marital relations and sexual habits, on their tastes in smoking, drinking, dress, sports cars, and interior decoration is our desperate effort to distinguish among the indistinguishable” (p. 65). Boorstin reasserts a binary masculine/feminine split in which only those individualist acts of achievement in the public sphere are truly worthy of the status of the “hero” or the “great man.” To be a great man, one must actually work—or perform publicly visible work—to achieve it, thus diminishing the feminine concerns and labors of the private sphere as outside of greatness and the celebrities who embody them as inauthentic and undeserving of fame. This distinction between the masculine public sphere of talent and achievement and the feminine private sphere of ordinariness continues ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The Ordinary and the Extraordinary: Unpacking the Celebrity Image
• 2. The Labor of Ordinariness: Famous for Being Yourself
• 3. Celebrity Lifestyle Labor: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary
• 4. Lauren Conrad: Us Weekly and the Extraordinarily Ordinary Celebrity
• Conclusion: The Future of the Extraordinarily Ordinary Celebrity
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author