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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

the demotic turn « Previous | |Next »
January 18, 2008

Graeme Turner invented the term "demotic turn" to describe the current convergence of celebrity and the ordinary, or the elevation of the ordinary to celebrity status. He writes:

"In Understanding Celebrity (2004), I coined the term 'the demotic turn' as a means of referring to the increasing visibility of the 'ordinary person' as they turn themselves into media content through celebrity culture, reality TV, DIY websites, talk radio and the like. In the context of the book, it was used as a means of understanding the proliferation of celebrity across the media since the 1980s, as well as celebrity's colonization of the expectations of everyday life in contemporary western societies, particularly among teenagers and young adults."

Enter Corey Delaney. He's an example of what Chris Rojek calls a celetoid. Turner quotes Rojek:

"Celetoids are the accessories of cultures organized around mass communications and staged authenticity. Examples include lottery winners, one-hit wonders, stalkers, whistle-blowers, sports' arena streakers, have-a-go-heroes, mistresses of public figures and the various other social types who command media attention one day and are forgotten the next."
Although if Corey plays his cards right his celetoid moment could land him a good job in event management or PR.

Turner thinks "we need to reconsider our understandings of what kind of cultural apparatus the media has become". It's gone beyond broadcasting information about what's going on and who we are, to shaping both of those. In our democratic culture the elevation of the ordinary appears to be a democratising process, but like everything else produced by the entertainment industry the impression is false. What if Corey had been Aboriginal?

Turner argues that "it is important to remember that celebrity still remains a systematically hierarchical and exclusive category, no matter how much it proliferates". This is how I understand the blogosphere as well. There is a hierarchy of sites, then mini hierarchies within sites from the most knowledgeable and articulate down to the semi-literate hysteric. A lot of bloggers strike me as celebrity opinion columnist wannabees, duplicating the offline environment online, while appearing to be ordinary, democratic, egalitarian.

On developments in media and reality TV Turner says we need to reconsider the idea that media is simply a mediator, that perhaps it has become "an author rather than a mediator or translator of cultural identity". Has it rewritten us as celebrities? Is celebrity becoming the Australian way of life?

| Posted by Lyn at 2:46 PM | | Comments (14)
Comments

Comments

Lyn,
the‘demotic turn’ in reality TV and celebrity culture is news to me. I understand that it is Turner's way of characterizing the increasing production of ‘ordinary’ celebrities through reality TV and DIY celebrity websites.Thus Australian Idol, Big Brother,and Corey.

Doesn't this imply that the public sphere is increasingly trivialised; commercialise; dominated by spectacle; fragmented and associated with an apathetic response to traditional forms of political engagement. I'm working off Lelia Green's review of Alan McKee's The Public Sphere: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, Melbourne,
2005) and Graeme Turner's Understanding Celebrity, (Sage Publications, London, 2004) entitled Understanding celebrity and the public sphere.

Doesn't this celeb culture also imply that we now have a postmodern public sphere as opposed to the modernist one of middle class highly educated (mostly male) public intellectuals; a public sphere that systematically excluded and marginalised those whom liberal modernity’s view of the 'other' through the mechanism of ‘rational, logical’ debate and argument. Thus

When the public sphere is characterised by a restrained, rational, serious and uncommercialised culture, this makes it easier for ‘formally educated people’... to understand and participate in debates while simultaneously making it more difficult for members of other cultural groups to do so.

This rational argument mechanism is what conservatives like Tim Blair have challenged and work to undermine. They work very differently---in a humorous aggressive style.

Gary, What we have here is Beavis & Butthead combined with Big Brother and Brave New World titty-tainment all rolled into one.

What is truly scary is that the folks behind Facebook have the same emotional "intelligence" as Beavis & Butthead. Except that they have leading edge technology with which to dramatise their adolescent destructiveness ALL over the planet---and to re-engineer Humankind into/after their own image.

The supposedly "christian" Girard should be ashamed of himself by lending his "authority" to their benighted endeavours.

Gary,
The 'post a comment' box has disappeared off the Facebook thread. I'm wondering whether there's not a much deeper analysis to be done on the effect the internet is having on our lives than anything we've seen so far. The splitting of disciplines is a disadvantage I suspect.

On the demotic turn,
It's bigger than the celebration of the ordinary and identification with celebrity. We had several discussions about celebrity and democracy during the election - people are using the same rationale they use for voting on Idol as electing a prime minister. And not just young people.

Turner is going beyond the production and consumption of the ordinary celebrity, and suggesting that this is now how we see ourselves. We matter to the extent that we can claim celebrity. Beyond visibility into visibility and popularity. It's not narcissism to have MySpace but an essential bit of cultural identity.

The weight of public opinion is expected to carry the day on everything. Whaling is the celebrity issue of the moment. Celebrity talking heads give us their opinions on whaling. If McKenzie Wark said whales are stupid and deserve to be harpooned I'd have to choose between Wark and whales.

The concern that the public sphere is trivialised etc does, I agree, come from the self interested perspective of an old guard. They have been blaming the fracturing of the public sphere on its trivialisation or postmodernisation, but I'd argue that this demotic turn offers a new way of engaging that was an important part of the Rudd campaign, public opinion of David Hicks and whales.

Think of the attention the polls got leading up to the election. The numbers representing public opinion became celebrities in a way. The numbers got the kind of inane scrutiny we expect to be reserved for Fergie's cellulite. Numbers and abstract concepts can also attain celebrity.

Tim Blair is an interesting example. He's an Australian celebrity talking head with a celebrity blog which carries weight in Australia, despite the fact that most of his blog supporters are American with a whole other set of cultural concerns. The local is not always the global.

This week Blair's cancer achieved celebrity status in the blogosphere. We need celebs to hate and fear as well as love and emulate.

The 'post a comment' box has disappeared off the Facebook thread.

It happened before. I reposted the whole thing and checked all the links. There must be a gremlin in the post. It will have to stay closed.

Lyn,
this is my first time here. I 've been intimidated by the philosophy stuff---the proposed new title 'conversations' is more inviting.

The Diana, Princess of Wales thingy really did confirm that we live in a celebrity culture. No doubts about that. I accept that celebs produce a culture--eg., the Australian cricket team. I also accept that celebrity dominates whole sectors of the magazine industry, it constitutes a growing proportion of television and radio news and current affairs, and it is one of the products of the reality TV formats.

There really was identification with Diana. I was amazed by it all. There was something like a grassroots reaction to her death in the UK and Australia, and the media was among those who took some time to realise that there might be something "authentic" about it. However, I have no desire to find out what Tom Cruse, Nicole Kidman, Kyle Minogue or Michael Jackson are really like. Nor do I have interest in their private lives as opposed to their films or music.

I've never understood the identification stuff. Diana had nothing to with my identity at all. Green says:

Turner suggests that the individual’s ‘real relationship’ with a physically remote celebrity (whom a fan or follower is unlikely to have ever met) is via the celebrity’s provision of raw material for ‘the construction of identity through cultural consumption.’ (102) Within the public culture of the time, Turner argues, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, represented an ‘abrupt end’ to the public entertainment
value and commodity value of this celebrity narrative. (101) He claims that ‘the eruptive and unforeshadowed character’ of her death shocked people in both an authentic and mediated way. (98)

I have no idea what they are talking about. My identity is based on my consumption of images of Diana in a trashy magazine in the supermarket? If not me then others? Who? Young girls who bought into the fairy tale princess spin?

It's true, many felt grief at Diana’s death and this grief was for the loss of something which had disappeared from their own lives. I have no idea what that something was though. Nothing disappeared from my life with her death.

John,
it's only Facebook--an online presence of who I am and a way to share things music, video, pictures with people who have similar interests.

Its what people are doing with this technology that is crucial not the philosophy of the inventors and financiers.

Pam,
you can find more by Graeme Turner on the Diana celeb stuff here on the Britannica Blog Interesting blog.

Pam,
Green says:

In some ways Turner’s arguments about the rise of celebrity culture parallel McKee’s when he states that some commentators and ‘public intellectuals’ tend ‘to regard the modern celebrity as a symptom of a worrying cultural shift: towards a culture that privileges the momentary, the visual and the sensational over the enduring, the written and the rational.’ The construction of ‘the spectacle’ as a technique for distracting people from the important affairs of life has been a complaint of critics of spectacular entertainments

Aren't these people the cultural conservatives defending a literary culture and good books?

Lyn I cannot see how Facebook Flickr or Thoughtfactory has anything to do with celebrity culture.

Pam,
Diana's death is one of the favourite examples. I must have read dozens of analyses of it. None explain my own response. I remember where I was, what I was doing, and who told me. She was just another crap celebrity to me, yet I was shocked when I heard. When I saw the public response on TV I cried, but don't know why. When I saw the movie The Queen I cried again. When I saw Helen Mirren pretending to be the queen suddenly realising the scale of grief I cried, and still don't know why. There was something viral about it.

Then again, I cry at the end of The Sound of Music and Strictly Ballroom.

I had problems with the construction of identity stuff too. I don't identify with any of the people you've listed either. But would I like to be as well presented, smart and articulate as Maxine McKew? Well, yeah, sometimes. Would I like to be as smart, articulate and funny as Catharine Lumby? Hell yeah.

Maybe different people identify with different types of celebrity depending on their own location in the cultural mosaic?

Gary,
From what I've read of Turner so far he doesn't go into celebrity talking heads, but there's a link somewhere between celebrity opinionators like op ed columnists and the practice of publicly opinionating on blogs. The debates themselves are only half of the equation, the other half is people feeling it's a worthwhile exercise to publicise their opinions. I don't think it's exhibitionism but something else.

Facebook, Flickr and Thoughtfactory all serve specific purposes for the people who use them. Facebook and Flickr are less familiar to me so I'll stick with Thoughtfactory. We probably all use it for different purposes, but it also fits into the framework of celebrity culture.

How famous or popular is Thoughtfactory compared with other blogs? Is fame or popularity something Thoughtfactory strives for? As a whole it's difficult to classify, but you can count the comments on the different parts to get an idea of different levels of fame and popularity on those parts. And accessibility of course, as Pam pointed out.

And in the online environment immediacy and presence are as important as in any other media. More so. It's less mediated. We know moderation is a hindrance. To what extent are comments driven by wanting to say something, or wanting to see our opinions published right now? We'll never know the answer to that one, I suspect.

I'm still fiddling with these ideas, but links do more than network. They can make you famous. Trackbacks.

A commenter can become well known across several blogs.

Tim Blair's opinions are as famous as Tim Blair.

Fame and celebrity come through exposure but are contingent. Contingencies are harder to control online where everything moves much faster.

And another thing, while I'm in the mood, this is why I have difficulty with the subdivisions in Thoughtfactory. Celebrity permeates every topic discussed on Public Opinion. Who said what is as important as what they said. And who or what they said it about. What would Karl Marx or Jesus Christ or Plato or Kant have said about media and celebrity? How would they have used it?

What would Max Dupain have thought of Flickr? Or more likely, how would he have expressed his disdain? If Robert Mapplethorpe wanted to post comments and 'snaps' on Junk For Code would we be discussing the media's and Canberra's reactions on Public Opinion?

Either submersing yourself in celebrity theory is bad for you or confusion is the natural consequence of spending a day with my mother.

Gary, I made another post yesterday which got lost in cyberspace. The one that you posted was a follow up.

I was pointing to an article by Tom Hodgkinson in the Age/Guardian titled Why You Should Be Aware of Facebook.

If he is right, and I think he makes a good case, Facebook is not as innocent as it seems and it does combine Beavis & Butthead, Big Brother and Brave New World titty-tainment as well.

Plus my comment re leading edge technology was in relation to the people behind Facebook and their other projects and relationships too--all part of a seamless whole---a collective adolsecent power trip. And in my opinion quite sinister in its implications.

Girard was mentioned in the article.

Pam + Lyn,
The whole Diana death narrative borders on the macabre. They are still holding inquests. Who cares? There's perversity therein.

Lyn,
the blogs used to be more interlinked when trackback was in operation. The trackback function has been closed because the waves of spam crashed the hosting companies servers. MT have found no way to keep trackback functioning and block the spam. Or they have shown little interest in doing so.

MT is an off-the-shelf publishing system. So you get what you pay for.

John,
your comment cannot be found anywhere in the system re philosophical conversations. I realized that were referring to the Tom Hodgkinson piece in the Age/Guardian titled Why You Should Be Aware of Facebook. Facebook stands on its own merits, just like Flickr, irrespective of who is behind it. Flickr is first class. Facebook is still pretty raw.

Maybe nothing much will happen to Facebook and it will fade away. A the moment it is being increrassingly picked up because it gives you an online presence that is interlinked with others and is constantly being updated.

The succeess will depend on whether the interlinking applications being developed are good, meet our needs and work. StumbleUpon, for instance, does.

Flickr enables me to post my photos, join groups of different photogrpahers, link up with others, and be updated on their work. It's the basis on which to build and become more professionalized---photoblog; more graphic orientate computers, good digital darkroom processing software, and galleries.

Will Facebook be similar in terms of my personal profile and social networking? Dunno.