Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies - Refashioning Stories for Celebrity Counterpublics, Jun 2021

Using celebrity narratives as a starting point, this Special Issue explores the social significance of storytelling for social change. It builds on the 8th Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies conference, which brought together scholars and media practitioners to explore how narratives inspired by the lives of celebrities, public intellectuals, critics and activists offer useful rhetorical tools to better understand dominant ideologies. This editorial further problematizes what it means to be a popular ‘storyteller’ using the critical lens of celebrity activism and life-writing. Throughout the issue, contributors analyse the politics of representation at play within a wide range of glamourous narratives, including documentaries, memoirs, TED talks, stand-up performances and award acceptance speeches in Hollywood and beyond. The studies show how we can strategically use aesthetic communication to shape identity politics in public personas and bring urgent social change in an image-driven celebrity culture.

Despite its universal importance, the Nobel Prize in literature, which is based in Sweden and administered by the Swedish Academy, is a central European literary prize. And the prestige which the Nobel Prize bestows upon its winners is fuelled by a central-European type of fetishization of intellectual achievement, in which Nobel laureates are more known than they are read. Rather than being publicly recognized for their literary achievements, Nobel Prize-winning authors become literary celebrities who represent various kinds of Nobel-related capitals, including political capital, cultural capital and economic capital. In this article, I investigate on two non-European, Nobel Prize-winning authors, Gao Xingjian (the first Chinese-language Nobel author, 2000) and Toni Morrison (the first African American female Nobel author, 1993), and how they represent different conceptions of literary celebrities, and by extension different types of counterpublics. In order to study the relationship between Nobel literary laureates, storytelling and the representation of marginalized groups in the public domain, I examine and compare how Gao Xingjian’s and Toni Morrison’s Nobel lectures give voice to the Sinophone community and the African American community respectively. For Gao’s case, I study his Nobel lecture against the backdrop of the Chinese ‘Nobel complex’. In Morrison’s case, I examine her Nobel lecture as being re-presented in her appearances on Oprah’s Book Club, a reading initiative launched by the popular American television talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show.

To conclude this Special Issue ‘Re-Fashioning Stories for Celebrity Counterpublics’ of the Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies (AJMS), I am delighted to share an interview with Samita Nandy, celebrity scholar, filmmaker and director of the Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies (CMCS). Her research focuses on the cultural dimensions of fame, with a specific interest in celebrity activism, storytelling and the performance of authenticity and intimacy in glamorous narratives. In addition to her academic work, Nandy is also a certified broadcast journalist from Canada and media critic. I had the opportunity to assist her and Kiera Obbard with the organization of the 8th CMCS Conference, which inspired this Special Issue. This interview is thus an opportunity to further expand our reflection on the political possibilities of storytelling and celebrity counterpublics. Our discussion builds on the themes and arguments developed throughout this issue to further explore what popular storytelling means in practice. She reflects on her engagement with celebrity culture and life-writing in her feminist research and artistic endeavours, and how it has empowered her to tell personal and collective stories. The interview format and its themes provide a unique opportunity to contemplate the affordances of a reflective practice paradigm and the artistic applications of disciplinary knowledge, one which bridges academic work with media professions, and which we hope will resonate with AJMS readers.